Arkane Studios

• 1. Introduction

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  Arkane Studios began on the 1st of October 1999 in Lyon, France, backed by an investment of 1,150,000 French francs. Eleven founders signed on, and only six of them were developers. This French game developer would go on to create the Dishonored series and the time-loop shooter Deathloop. As of early 2026 it is working on Marvel's Blade. The road to those games was far from smooth. Publishers collapsed, projects were cancelled, and at one point the staff were nearly let go. What was the dream that launched the company, and why did it slip out of reach? How did a rescue arrive just in time? And what became of the second studio the founder opened in Texas in 2006?

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• 2. The Underworld Dream

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  Raphaël Colantonio spent the 1990s in the French offices of Electronic Arts, working in quality assurance and localisation. His tasks touched titles from Origin Systems, among them System Shock. By the late 1990s he sensed the company drifting. The PlayStation had arrived, and EA was showing more appetite for sports games than for non-sports titles from studios like Origin. Colantonio left, spent a short time at Infogrames, and then co-founded Arkane with financial help from his uncle.

  Paul Neurath, one of the original developers of Ultima Underworld, supported the new company's first goal. That goal was a second sequel to Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss. But EA owned the rights, and it would only hand over its intellectual property if Colantonio accepted certain provisions. He refused. Arkane instead set out to make a game in the spirit of Ultima Underworld, and it was called Arx Fatalis.

  JoWooD Productions rescued Arx Fatalis, but only after a small publisher signed with Arkane and went bankrupt within a month. By then the studio's money was nearly gone. The game finally reached players in 2002. Critics received it well, yet it was still considered a commercial failure. That praise would soon bring an invitation from Valve.

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• 3. Work for Hire

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  Valve offered Arkane the chance to build a new title on its Source engine, and Colantonio chose to make Arx Fatalis 2. Sales of the first game had been poor, so publishers shied away from a sequel. Ubisoft then asked for something different. It wanted Arkane to apply the Arx Fatalis engine to its Might and Magic series. The result, Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, was released in October 2006. It refined the first-person melee combat of Arx Fatalis and put less weight on role-playing.

  In June 2006, Colantonio moved from France to Austin, Texas, and set up Arkane Austin. He left his colleagues in charge of the main studio. Most of the development work stayed in Lyon, where production costs were lower thanks to favourable economic conditions. Austin had a different job. It built relationships with other studios in order to win work-for-hire projects that supplemented Arkane's own games.

  Between 2006 and 2007, Arkane worked with Valve on Ravenholm, a spinoff of the Half-Life series. It expanded on earlier work by Warren Spector's Junction Point Studios. The two teams produced about nine to ten levels for a playable alpha build. Then the project was cancelled, believed to be because of its lateness and the cost so far.

  A budget of around $15 million hung over The Crossing, the first-person shooter Arkane began next on the Source engine. Colantonio described it as "crossplayer". It was mainly single-player, but influenced by online multiplayer ideas. That price tag made it hard to find a publisher whose contract did not carry strict rules and requirements. Colantonio did eventually find one satisfactory offer. Then EA asked Arkane to help with LMNO, a game it was developing with Steven Spielberg. EA's offer was worth more and was more stable, so Colantonio cancelled The Crossing.

  About two years later, EA cancelled LMNO as well. Arkane spent the next few years in supporting roles. It developed the multiplayer component of Activision's Call of Duty: World at War. It also helped 2K Marin's BioShock 2 with "design, animation, and art". The catalogue from this period also lists KarmaStar, a 2009 iOS game published by Majesco Entertainment. Colantonio was still trying to grow the Austin studio, and a conversation there would soon change its direction.

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• 4. The Ninja Pitch

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  Harvey Smith and Colantonio had met early in their careers and stayed in contact. Both noticed that they shared several similar talents. At first they feared that two such people in one studio would be too troublesome. Then they imagined making one game together and saw how well their strengths might mesh. They quickly devised a "ninja pitch" that tied into the basis of Dishonored, and they worked out how to share responsibilities at the studio. Smith formally came on board Arkane in 2008.

  Entering 2010, Arkane had no game of its own, and its contract work was running down. The studio was preparing to let staff go to conserve costs. Then Bethesda Softworks arrived with an idea for a stealth game set in feudal Japan. They wanted to call it Dishonored, and they felt Arkane's talents were ideal for it.

  Todd Vaughn, Bethesda's vice-president of development, had seen Arkane's work on Arx Fatalis and its sequel, according to Colantonio. Bethesda had been interested, but it did not react fast enough before Arkane took another route. Vaughn told Arkane that Bethesda wanted a first-person immersive game and that Arkane was its only option. Colantonio judged Bethesda the best fit, pointing to the similarities between Arx Fatalis and The Elder Scrolls games.

  By August 2010, ZeniMax Media, Bethesda's parent, had fully acquired Arkane after a few months of contract work. ZeniMax was in a period of growth, having recently bought id Software. With financial backing and a parent that appreciated good game design, Arkane gained the time and creative freedom to rework Bethesda's original concept. The team built on the pitch that Colantonio and Smith had developed earlier. They moved the setting from Japan to one inspired by London, and they kept the Dishonored name and the stealth. Dishonored was released in 2012.

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• 5. Two Studios, Two Games

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  Dishonored 2 reached players in November 2016, and Smith moved to France to lead the Lyon studio through its making. It was the first title developed separately by Arkane Lyon. Colantonio stayed in Austin to lead Prey, which was released in 2017. Prey was a spiritual sequel to both System Shock and Arx Fatalis. Arkane Lyon also developed Dishonored: Death of the Outsider.

  Human Head Studios made the earlier Prey games that ZeniMax had acquired, including a 2006 Prey and the cancelled Prey 2. Arkane's Prey took only its name from that intellectual property.

  Unreal 3 powered the first Dishonored, while CryEngine powered Prey. Arkane also developed its own Void Engine, built on a heavily modified version of id Tech 5. Void ran Dishonored 2 and a later Arkane Lyon game, Deathloop. Sébastien Mitton, art director of Dishonored 2, explained that Void uses about 20% of id Tech 5. The rest was rewritten to support larger and denser maps.

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• 6. Leadership Changes

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  In June 2017, about two months after Prey's release, Colantonio announced that he was stepping down as president of Arkane. He explained his reasons in a statement. He wanted "to spend some time with my son and reflect on what is important to me and my future." Smith took over management of the Austin studio. Colantonio stayed with the Lyon studio to help transition it to new management.

  Fallout 76 at Bethesda Game Studios was one beneficiary once Arkane finished supporting Dishonored 2 and Prey. Arkane helped other ZeniMax studios during this time. MachineGames received help with level design on Wolfenstein: Youngblood and Wolfenstein: Cyberpilot.

  At Bethesda's E3 2019 press conference, Arkane Lyon unveiled Deathloop. It was a science-fiction first-person shooter in which the player character is stuck in a time loop. Within two years, ZeniMax itself would be sold.

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• 7. The Microsoft Years

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  Microsoft acquired ZeniMax Media for US$7.5 billion in March 2021. That placed Arkane inside Microsoft Gaming, alongside other development teams under Bethesda Softworks. Microsoft honored agreements that the publisher had already made with other platform holders. As a result, Deathloop launched as a timed console exclusive for PlayStation 5, and it was released that September.

  Romuald Capron had headed Arkane Lyon for seventeen years when he announced in October 2021 that he was stepping down. He said he felt "the need to try something new". Dinga Bakaba, Sébastien Mitton, Hugues Tardif and Morgan Barbe were left in charge of managing the studio. Bakaba was named studio head in November 2021. Arkane Austin, meanwhile, was working toward its own release in 2023.

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• 8. Redfall and Closure

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  In May 2023, Arkane Austin released Redfall, a co-op first-person shooter. By the time its development was complete, approximately 70% of the Austin team who had worked on Prey would be gone.

  On the 7th of May 2024, Microsoft closed several internal studios within ZeniMax, including Arkane Austin. That ended further development of Redfall. Matt Booty notified developers by email memo, and the closure reportedly came as a surprise. The Austin team had still been working on delayed Hero Pass material for Redfall, due for release on Halloween 2024. The closure resulted in 96 job losses.

  In Lyon, work continued on Marvel's Blade, which Arkane Lyon announced at the Game Awards 2023. The project is a collaboration with Marvel Games and Bethesda Softworks, based on the Marvel Comics character of the same name. It is a third-person action-adventure game. That marks a departure from the first-person perspective of the studio's earlier action titles.

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