Spared a year ago, the Eidos-Montreal studio was finally hit on Monday by the “global restructuring” carried out by its new owner, the Swedish group Embracer. The layoffs of 97 people, nearly a quarter of the workforce, were announced on Monday, while Bloomberg revealed that the sequel to one of the studio’s favorite games, Deus Exwas abandoned.
Eidos-Montreal confirmed Monday, on its LinkedIn account and on [ses] development teams, administration and support services” were affected by these cuts.
“The global economic context, the challenges of our industry and the global restructuring announced by Embracer have finally affected our studio,” we explain in this publication.
In November 2022, six months after Embracer’s acquisition of Square Enix’s three production studios, the closure of Square Enix Montreal, which had 200 employees, was announced. The other two, Eidos-Montreal and Crystal Dynamics of San Francisco, were not affected, with a manager explaining that they had “big ambitions” for them. “We see growth opportunities focused on quality franchises and AAA games,” said Phil Rogers, director of CDE Entertainment, the subsidiary created by Embracer after the acquisition of Square Enix.
It was impossible to obtain comments from Eidos-Montreal or Embracer. A spokesperson for the Swedish group, quoted by the IGN website, recalled that “a vast restructuring program for the 23-24 financial year, until the end of March 2024”, had been announced. “This process will be managed locally at operational group level, with a focus on informing affected employees first, and at group level we will not comment on specific studios,” added this door -speech.
Suite canceled
According to information published Monday by Bloomberg, which has not been confirmed by Embracer, Eidos-Montreal was recently ordered to abandon the project for a new episode of Deus Ex.
This sequel, which had never been announced, but which the Eidos-Montreal teams had been working on for two years, would have been canceled to make way for a brand new franchise.
Deus Ex: Human Revolution was in 2011 the first major game produced by the Montreal studio founded in 2007. The last episode, Mankind Divideddates from 2016. According to the VG Chartz site, 12 million copies of Deus Ex: Human Revolution and of Deus Ex: Mankind Divided would have found a buyer.