Independent Canadian studio Behaviour Interactive has reportedly been hit with layoffs in its Montreal headquarters.
As reported by Video Games Chronicle, Kotaku has confirmed through their own sources that their head Montreal offices laid off 45 employees, across different departments. Behaviour Interactive has yet to officially announce or confirm the layoffs, but a former employee has chimed in.
While we know that this is part of an ongoing wave of video game industry layoffs that started last year, this one hurts particularly hard, and is also somewhat unique. Behaviour Interactive is not owned by a larger conglomerate, such as Activision, Electronic Arts, or Embracer Group.
Founded in 1992 as Megatoon, Behaviour Interactive has managed to survive these past few decades as a completely independent game studio, mostly doing contract work for bigger publishers.
Today, we know Behaviour Interactive as the studio that conceived of Dead by Daylight, and by doing so, invented the asymmetrical horror multiplayer genre. But some of the contract games they had worked on through the years include the likes of Bugs Bunny & Taz: Time Busters, Spider-Man: Friend or Foe, support work for titles like Wet and Mercenaries 2, and a sea of licensed games.
Most recently, the studio released the boldly experimental Meet Your Maker last year. Meet Your Maker tasks players with building outposts filled with traps, while taking on outposts created by other players.
In spite of the dim prospects in the industry lately, 2023 was filled with a lot of activity for the company, so this sudden hit of layoffs was so surprising. Among other things, Behaviour opened a new studio in Cornwall called Behaviour UK – South, and acquired two other developers, Sockmonkey Studios and Codeglue.
Behaviour had also secured a deal with Blumhouse Pictures to make a Dead by Daylight film, with James Wan’s Atomic Monster producing. On top of all that, Behaviour earned a lot of goodwill among fans and in the industry when they announced they abolished crunch in their company in 2019.
But because Behaviour Interactive has yet to even confirm the news, we don’t have clarity for the reason behind the layoffs. It is possible that this is not, as is the case with other game studios, because of adverse economic or financial conditions. For example, companies will lay off employees found guilty of misconduct, or if said employees are in conflict with the rest of the company. But we only provide these as examples, and won’t speculate on the specifics with Behaviour’s situation here.
GameRanx wishes the best for Behaviour’s outgoing employees and we hope they can find new placement still in the games industry.
