Deus Ex: Humanity Divided And Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy Developer Eidos-Montreal is laying off 97 people and reportedly canceling an unannounced Deus Ex game. Eidos Montreal confirmed the layoffs at Xformerly Twitter, on Monday according to a Bloomberg report about the canceled game, which has reportedly been in development for two years.
“The global economic context, the challenges facing our industry and the major restructuring announced by Embracer have finally impacted our studio,” Eidos-Montreal said on “
Reached for comment, an Eidos-Montreal representative referred to the X post but did not comment on the reportedly canceled Deus Ex game. Bloomberg reported that Eidos-Montreal will instead focus on “an original franchise.” Eidos-Montreal was originally a Square Enix studio – until the company sold Eidos, Crystal Dynamics and Square Enix Montreal to Embracer Group in 2022. The $300 million deal gave Embracer rights to Tomb Raider, Thief and Deus Ex, as well as ownership of more than 50 Square Enix games. Square Enix Montreal was briefly renamed
Eidos-Montreal’s last game is Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy. The last main game Deus Ex was released in 2016: Deus Ex: Humanity Divided. According to Bloomberg, the studio has been working on the next game for two years.
Embracer has been in a downward spiral after aggressive expansion in recent years: it acquired Borderlands developer Gearbox, 3D Realms and the rights to them Lord of the Rings In 2021 and 2022 alone. The major cracks began to appear in June 2023, when Embracer announced that it was closing several studios and canceling several games, just weeks after the company made a botched $2 billion deal with the Saudi Arabian investment fund Savvy Games had announced. Since then, hundreds of people have been laid off from Embracer studios, including the entire staff of now-closed Saints Row developer Volition.
2022 and 2023 were devastating years for workers in the video game industry, with more than 10,000 people laid off, according to industry trackers. But unfortunately, 2024 is on track for the next record – January isn’t even over yet and more than 6,000 gaming workers have already been laid off.
