Colantonio left the company, and after a brief time at Infogrames, was able to co-found Arkane with financial help from his uncle, with their first goal to make a second sequel to Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss.
[5][6] While Colantonio had support from Paul Neurath, one of the original developers of Ultima Underworld, EA, who owned the rights, would not allow Arkane to make a sequel with their intellectual property unless he accepted some of their provisions.
[9][10] On completion of Dark Messiah, Arkane started development of a new first-person shooter title, The Crossing using the Source engine.
[4] This including developing the multiplayer component of Activision's Call of Duty: World at War,[12][13] and helping with "design, animation, and art" for 2K Marin's BioShock 2.
[4] Entering into 2010 with no game of their own, and their contract work having started to run down, the studio was preparing to let go of its staff to conserve costs.
[15] With financial backing and a parent company that appreciated good game design, Arkane had the time and creative freedom to revamp Bethesda's original concept for Dishonored based on the pitch that Colantonio and Smith had earlier developed, and moved the setting from Japan to one inspired by London while retaining the Dishonored name and stealth aspects.
[21] During Bethesda's E3 2019 press conference, Arkane Lyon unveiled its next game, Deathloop, a science-fiction based first-person shooter with the player-character stuck in a time loop.
As part of the arrangement for acquiring ZeniMax, Microsoft honored existing contractual agreements the publisher had made with other platform holders, including Deathloop's launch as a timed console exclusive for PlayStation 5, which released that September.
[23][24] Following the release of Deathloop, Romuald Capron, head of Arkane Lyon for seventeen years, announced in October 2021 he was stepping down and with Dinga Bakaba, Sébastien Mitton, Hugues Tardif and Morgan Barbe left in charge of managing the studio.
Capron stated that he felt "the need to try something new" and "my goal is to keep on helping video game companies, and others, to make their creative vision become a reality, since that’s what I love to do".
[29] Before the closure, developers at Arkane Austin were continuing to work on the delayed 'Hero Pass' content for Redfall, which was due for release on Halloween 2024.
[34] According to Dishonored 2's art director Sébastien Mitton, Void uses about 20% of id Tech 5, the rest rewritten to have larger and denser maps.