Eidos-Montréal has announced a new round of 75 layoffs.
As reported by Video Games Chronicle, the studio shared this message on LinkedIn:
“Today, we informed our studio staff that we are going to let go up to 75 valuable members, as one of our mandates is coming to an end.
It is not a reflection of their dedication or skills, but unfortunately, we don’t have the capacity to entirely reallocate them to our other ongoing projects and services.
These very talented, highly experienced experts are going to enter the employment market, and we are working to support them through this transition. Eidos-Montréal stays committed to deliver its other projects currently in development.”
Eidos-Montréal announced layoffs of 97 staff just this January. At the time, they made the expected explanation that it was due to the unfavorable economic conditions of the video game industry, as well as the restructuring undertaken by its parent company, the now infamous Embracer Group.
This time, they made reference to an end of ‘one of our mandates.’ While they did not reveal what this mandate is, we suspect we know what it is. It may be that the long-rumored Deus Ex game that was also rumored to be cancelled is the said mandate.
To be clear, although Embracer Group stated that they were done with their restructuring, this could be considered one of the remaining unfinished pieces of business related to that restructuring process.
Since they didn’t officially announce a new Deus Ex, Eidos-Montréal doesn’t have to confirm that they cancelled such a project. That also means that we can’t be really sure what future plans they have for the franchise.
But it’s also possible that this is related to another project, as unlikely as that could be. The studio revealed that they were doing support work for upcoming Playground Games project Fable last year.
Now, some may misconstrue this to mean that there’s some issue with the development of Fable, but that’s not what we meant. What is the more likely scenario is that work on the game is winding down as it nears release. The Eidos-Montréal staff who were working on Fable may be the people who the company ‘does not have the capacity’ to keep employed.
We would like to believe that some of them could be picked up by Playground Games, but that hope would be based on speculation that has yet to be corroborated. In any case, we wish the best for the staff set to leave Eidos-Montréal, and hope that they can find placement back in the video game industry.
