A recent wave of copyright claims made by Redfall publisher Bethesda and its parent company Microsoft resulted in the accidental takedown of the banner for the game's Twitter account. Redfall is mere hours from releasing on PC and Xbox Series X/S; thus, discussion on the title has begun making the rounds online.Redfall is the latest title from Arkane Studios and has been highly promoted by Microsoft as one of Xbox's biggest upcoming titles. While the game has garnered controversy online due to its performance limitations, the marketing for Redfall has continued strong. These promotional efforts include a contest to win a custom Redfall Xbox Series X and controller, with the winner set to be announced during a launch stream hosted by Arkane Austin.With the launch time of Redfall just hours away, the title will soon be playable to those buying the game at launch or who are subscribed to Xbox Game Pass. It would appear that Microsoft and Bethesda appear to be trying to suppress any leaks before the game's launch, which has resulted in the accidental takedown of the banner on the game's official Twitter account. This was documented by Twitter user PMS_Jordan, who managed to record a screen capture of the Redfall account with a banner that read, "This image has been removed in response to a report from the copyright holder."
The banner has since been restored, though the Redfall account has yet to make any comment on the incident. Copyright claims made by game publishers are far from uncommon, though some companies are more active in this respect than others. Nintendo is famously protective of how its intellectual property is shown and presented online, as was seen with the copyright strike given to the YouTube channel Did You Know Gaming for its video on Heroes of Hyrule. While many of these incidents tend to be amended without much issue, they occasionally escalate and can result in further litigation.
As was seen with the leaks of Star Wars Jedi: Survivor and other recent releases, it has become unfortunately common for upcoming games to be leaked shortly before launch. It can be inferred that this has caused publishers and developers to more diligently police what content on their games makes the rounds online. Though it is easy to understand why these companies would act protectively, this Redfall takedown shows that there is still plenty of room for error.
Redfall launches on May 1 for PC and Xbox Series X/S.