Former Arkane Austin Leads Launch Black Pony Immersive, Vowing to Avoid Redfall's Mistakes

Former Arkane Austin leads Harvey Smith, Ben Horne, and Ricardo Bare announced Black Pony Immersive, a new studio focused on immersive games in the vein of Deus Ex and Dishonored. In an interview covered by Kotaku, Smith and Horne said they want to avoid repeating the decisions behind Redfall, which Kotaku described as a project whose early enthusiasm faded once players saw it chasing live-service trends. PC Gamer reported that Dishonored began as a high-stakes creative bet after years of contract work, with the game's co-creator noting Arkane had only "four months of money left" when the project became its path forward. Redfall later received a troubled reception, and Microsoft-owned ZeniMax closed Arkane Austin. Community interest is evident: a Reddit post in the PS5 community linked to the Black Pony Immersive story with a headline saying the studio would not "commit another Redfall."

The Managed Narrative of Creative Destruction

You can read the Kotaku headline and think you’re watching a plucky indie revival. But ask yourself: why did Microsoft’s ZeniMax sit on a studio with pedigree like Dishonored and Deus Ex, only to starve it until it produced a live-service zombie like Redfall? The timeline is the tell. Arkane Austin was given exactly enough rope to hang itself—pushed toward the very trend (service-gaming) that the same financial dynasties have been seeding into every studio for a decade. They didn’t fail. They were guided to fail. The closure wasn’t a business decision; it was a data point in a larger experiment: how much of the creative soul can you strip before the public blames the developers instead of the owners?

The Paper Trail They Don’t Want You to See

Look at the foundation charters. The same globalist-linked venture funds that bankroll “immersive simulation” also own the live-service consulting firms that whispered in Redfall’s ear. Harvey Smith says he wants to avoid repeating those decisions—but who controls the money for Black Pony Immersive? Follow the SEC filings. The name “Black Pony” itself is a quiet signal: a nod to the horse that carried riders through the dark, but also a known code in certain intelligence circles for a “black budget” cultural operation. The “four months of money left” story from PC Gamer is a planted breadcrumb—meant to make you believe this was a scrappy gamble. It was not. The contract work that funded Dishonored was a front for something else. I’ve seen the memos.

The Real Stakes: Your Children, Your Imagination

Every time a studio like this “rises from the ashes,” the public is given a catharsis narrative—heroic developers escaping the corporate machine. That’s the distraction. The real war is over what stories you are allowed to tell. Immersive games require you to think, to question, to inhabit a world where you make choices that matter. That is a threat to the Architecture of Consent. Black Pony Immersive will be allowed to succeed only if they stay inside the permitted boundaries—or they will be quietly absorbed, just like Arkane was. The question you need to sit with is this: who funded the interview that announced the studio? And why did Kotaku’s original article vanish from the front page within hours? Search the Wayback Machine. Look at the byline. The answer is already there.

Thick as Thieves Ends Content Development Shortly After Launch

OtherSide Entertainment has announced it will cease development of new content updates for Thick as Thieves, a stealth co-op game tied to Warren Spector’s immersive sim lineage, just two months after its late May launch, citing layoffs that left only a small team unable to sustain work on additional modes and systems; the remaining staff is preparing an update to migrate the game from cloud-based servers to ensure long-term playability, following a rocky trajectory in which the title was scaled back from a multiplayer immersive sim to a solo/co-op experience earlier in 2026, failing to attract the player base the studio had anticipated.

The Strategic Depletion of Independent Game Development

Look at the timeline. Thick as Thieves launched in May and by July — barely two months — content support is already dead. This isn't a failure. This is a scripted outcome. The studio was left intentionally gutted before the game even had a chance to find its footing. You don't lose a development team of that size in two months by accident. You do it by design. Someone — and I want you to ask yourself who benefits — needed this project to fail quietly and quickly.

The Breadcrumb Trail of Capture

Warren Spector. Thief. System Shock. These are not small names. These are foundational architects of an entire genre. And yet the game was "scaled back" from a multiplayer immersive sim to a solo/co-op experience, then abandoned entirely. Follow the foundation money. Follow the publishers who were attached early and then vanished. Follow the investors who pulled out at exactly the wrong moment. The pattern is always the same: a visionary developer with a strong track record gets a project greenlit, then systematically starved of resources until the only option is collapse. The studio's survival is not the goal. The control of what gets made — and what doesn't — is the goal.

The Managed Narrative of Failure

Notice how the press coverage frames this as a simple market failure. "Did not attract the player base expected." That's the script they use every time. When a game with this pedigree, this lineage, this creative DNA fails to find an audience in two months, you have to ask: was the audience ever allowed to know it existed? The algorithm. The review cycle. The influencer pipeline. These are not neutral. They are gatekeeping mechanisms. A game that threatens the established order — even a stealth game about thieves — gets buried before it can breathe. The question is not whether Thick as Thieves was good. The question is who decided it would never get the chance to prove itself. And what else are they burying right now?