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Redfall Is Always Online Even In Single-Player, Bethesda Confirms

Draugoth

Gold Member
Redfall was given a release date during the Xbox Bethesda event last week, but it turns out there could be significant downsides to the multiplayer portion of the game. As confirmed by Bethesda, the game will be “always online” even when you’re playing in single-player, which could raise concerns as to the longevity of the game and how long you can actually play it for.

As stated in the official FAQ:

“A persistent online connection is required for single-player and co-op. A Bethesda.net account is required.”

gen_204
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This means that Redfall joins the infamous Always-On DRM list of games that includes Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time, Forza Horizon, Gran Turismo 7, and more.

The main concern with DRM of this nature is the potential that eventually servers could be completely removed, which would render the games completely unplayable. This leads to a loss of investment and especially a loss of a product that the player has paid for. It also means that players need their console to always be connected to the internet, even if they wish to play Redfall offline.

It remains to be seen exactly how this will play out for Redfall, since the game has the potential to last for years from release.
 
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GHG

Gold Member
I actually didn't care much about this kind stuff until I went to play hitman 3 the other week and couldn't because the servers were shitting the bed.

If games want to offer some kind of persistent world and/or do it for the purposes of cheat prevention then I get it but at least offer players the option to have a fully offline singleplayer save.

The dark souls games have this right, why can't everyone else?
 

geary

Member
This leads to a loss of investment and especially a loss of a product that the player has paid for.
Basically as the whole digital video game industry...So much concern about and nitpicking on everything.
 

STARSBarry

Gold Member
Ah, lets see how this gets treated.
Last year it was a problem for GT7. But pretty sure the tone and narrative will change now that an Xbox game is doing it…..

oh christ did you not see the GT7 threads, you had fucking religious crusaders announcing that being online only was the greatest thing ever because GT7 did it, and that suggesting otherwise was heresy that required them to trawl through your comment history to discredit you as a person, because they based this on nothing but pure faith and had zero defensible points, loudly declaring "your probably dont even own GT7 OR A PS5" when presented with photographic evidence I do "well your just wrong HERITIC, also your tea sucks" I wish I was joking, I ended up just blocking a bunch of members in the end.

being Xbox or Playstation don't matter, its just being a fanboy, full stop.
 
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winjer

Gold Member
I actually didn't care much about this kind stuff until I went to play hitman 3 the other week and couldn't because the servers were shitting the bed.

If games want to offer some kind of persistent world and/or do it for the purposes of cheat prevention then I get it but at least offer players the option to have a fully offline singleplayer save.

The dark souls games have this right, why can't everyone else?

I had that same problem a couple of times with Hitman 3.
It's really annoying not to be able to play the SP game I paid for, because of such a dumb decision of forcing a constant online connection.
 

Needlecrash

Member
Here We Go Again GIF


Fucking hell. Not only that, you have to logon to their service to play. I guess Bethesda getting rid of their own Bethesda store was the end of it. NO. You have to logon to ANOTHER service, just like EA and Ubisoft, for this too. This was too good to be true.
 
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Crying about always online in 2023? Who cuts off the internet after downloading a game?
so the disk version is only a download code? smh
And after moving I played for a year my downloaded games, basically offline, maybe refreshing licenses once via my phone wifi.

Always online DRM for SP shouldn't be a thing. Nowhere. No matter if the MP-portion is the generally agreed core of the game, or if I bought it directly online. SP should work if I have the required hw, and nothing else should matter.
 

mrmustard

Banned
so the disk version is only a download code? smh
And after moving I played for a year my downloaded games, basically offline, maybe refreshing licenses once via my phone wifi.

Always online DRM for SP shouldn't be a thing. Nowhere. No matter if the MP-portion is the generally agreed core of the game, or if I bought it directly online. SP should work if I have the required hw, and nothing else should matter.
Yeah, because so many games get released in a good state on disc. Can't remember a single game in the last 10 years where i didn't have to download many GB of data. It's a special snowflake issue, but uninteresting for the masses.
 

Dick Jones

Gold Member
GT7 did not need to be always online. It's a dumb decision.

I mean .. sure .. this isn't as big of a deal as it was 5 years ago.

I don't know how much this game relies on dailies/weeklies kinda things, but that might be one of the reason even in SP.

You must have used all your ban time to reflect on these practices. When was your road to Damascus moment?
 

ANDS

King of Gaslighting
gen_204

The main concern with DRM of this nature is the potential that eventually servers could be completely removed, which would render the games completely unplayable. This leads to a loss of investment and especially a loss of a product that the player has paid for. It also means that players need their console to always be connected to the internet, even if they wish to play Redfall offline.

I mean. . .not really. This is DRM and nothing more; when and if REDFALL is sunset there's nothing we've seen in the game that precludes them from patching out the always online requirement.

. . .is also likely there to stop players from compromising other players games from bringing a hacked offline account online.
 

Chukhopops

Member
It’s either always online or you get a Monster Hunter situation where you will be joined by people with 4000 atk / 5000 def.

If there is cross-play with PC that seems like a needed option if you don’t want to fully gate SP and MP with different characters.
 

ReBurn

Gold Member
Crying about always online in 2023? Who cuts off the internet after downloading a game?
People who take their consoles on submarines running on the subway.

I get being frustrated over it, though. When Spectrum decided at midnight to turn off my internet access for "planned maintenance" that they didn't bother to tell me about I lost my ability to finish the work I was doing despite software I use for it being installed on my laptop. It's easy to get behind expecting single player games to be usable without a network connection once they are installed.
 

Maddoxswe

Member
The problem whit this is not that you have internet connection, it's relative safe to assume that almost all people that own one of the three consoles have stable internet connection nowadays, the problem is that the servers can be down or heck they even shut down the servers and then it doesn't work to play it at all.
 
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YuLY

Member
I'm confused as to why it used Denuvo then. Isnt it being always-online the DRM in itself and very hard to crack? like the last 3-4 Call of Duty games which are also always-online.
 

MiguelItUp

Member
I figured it was gonna have some kind of store/monetization making it some kind of GaaS to a certain degree. Can't say I'm surprised, but whatever I guess, lol.
 
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Ar¢tos

Member
Why can Borderlands be a looter shooter and have offline mode, but this cant? Lets not beat around the bush, this is for DRM purposes. But I'm still baffled that it uses Denuvo also , reeks of desperation.
Borderlands had tons of save editing. I assume it is the Destiny approach, online saves, no cheatengine or save editing.
 
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