The town of Redfall currently has fewer players than shopping centers in most major cities around the world. According to SteamDB the Redfall player count has steadily been plummetting since its May 2 release and is now under two hundred. Redfall peaked at 6,124 players at release and at the time of this writing sits at 172 players with a 24-hour peak of 376. Reddit user u/OneYearSteakDay noted an even lower Redfall player count of 152 as of yesterday and news for the $69.99 game only gets worse in reading reviews on Steam.
Redfall currently holds a “mostly negative” review ranking on Steam with 871 positive reviews but then 2,120 negative reviews which means just over seventy percent of its reviews are currently negative. A fair number of the thumbs-down reviews do attempt to give the game some credit for its visuals and potential for improvements while most seem to agree that the game feels unfinished, empty, and in need of updates to fix various issues. One user even joked that although they got the game for free they still felt a refund was in order just as another attempted to defend it as not being a bad or terrible game but indeed an aggressively mediocre title.
From Redfall to Starfield
Redfall was published by Bethesda Softworks and developed by Arkane Austin. Bethesda is a huge company with many studios under its roof and with the forthcoming release of Starfield hopes are high that game will launch in a better state. Recently Xbox CEO Phil Spencer expressed regret over the launch state of Redfall and said that Microsoft promises “a better job” with Starfield. Bethesda’s parent company, ZeniMax Media was purchased by Microsoft in March 2021 for $7.5 billion hence the sentiment from the Xbox boss. Starfield has experienced many delays in getting released and the latest launch date has been pushed back to September. Hopefully, by then it will release in a polished state. Meanwhile, Redfall is in a dire state needing life support from its developers if it is to survive.