The Eidos-Montreal studio, spared a year ago, was finally hit Monday by the “global restructuring” of its new owner, Swedish group Embracer. On Monday, the layoffs of 97 people, almost a quarter of the workforce, were announced, while Bloomberg announced that the sequel to one of the studio's favorite games, Deus Ex, had been abandoned.
Published yesterday at 6:08 p.m.
Eidos-Montreal confirmed this on Monday on its LinkedIn account and further [ses] “Development teams, administration and support services” were affected by these cuts.
“The global economic context, the challenges facing our industry and the global restructuring announced by Embracer have definitively impacted our studio,” we state in this release.
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 San Francisco-based Crystal Dynamics, were unaffected, with one executive saying they had “big ambitions” for them. “We see growth opportunities focused on high-quality franchises and AAA games,” said Phil Rogers, director of CDE Entertainment, the subsidiary that Embracer founded after acquiring Square Enix.
It was impossible to get comments from Eidos-Montreal or Embracer. A spokesman for the Swedish group quoted on the IGN website recalled that “a comprehensive restructuring program for the 23-24 financial year until the end of March 2024” had been announced. “This process will be managed locally at an operational group level with an emphasis on informing affected employees first, and at a group level we will not be commenting on specific studios,” this door speech added.
Suite canceled
According to information published by Bloomberg on Monday, which has not been confirmed by Embracer, Eidos-Montreal was recently ordered to cancel the project for a new installment of Deus Ex.
This sequel, never announced but two years in the making by the Eidos Montreal teams, would have been canceled to make way for a brand new franchise.
In 2011, Deus Ex: Human Revolution was the first major game produced by the Montreal studio, founded in 2007. The last episode, Mankind Divided, is from 2016. According to the VG Chartz website, 12 million copies of Deus Ex: Human Revolution and Deus Ex: Mankind Divided would have found a buyer.