Embracer Group hits both gamers and their developers with a double whammy today by announcing that they will be shutting down Onoma.
Corresponding Bloomberg, staff at the recently rebranded Onoma studio were briefed on the closure during a meeting on Tuesday. About 200 employees are reported to be affected by the closure. Some of the named employees were reportedly offered jobs at sister company Eidos Montréal, which Embracer also bought from Square Enix. Bloomberg also reported that Eidos Montréal is working on a new one deus ex Game that is “very, very early” in development and co-developing a new one fable Play alongside Microsoft’s own development studio, Playground Games, alongside an all-new IP.
Embracer Group has reportedly decided to shut down Onoma, a studio it only bought in May, to reduce the scale and cost of developing games. This news comes shortly after the video game publisher renamed the studioformerly known as Square Enix Montréal just last month.
The Canadian developer is known for mobile games like deus ex, Hitman Go, Tomb Raider Go, and had an iOS and Android game for Avatar: The Last Airbender in development. Corresponding Bloomberg Reporter Jason Schreier, one of the canceled games Onoma was working on was a stranger things-inspired bike game.
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Embracer is a Swedish games company that owns other studios including Gearbox Interactive and THQ Nordic, among others.
When Embracer first bought Onoma from Square Enix, the publisher announced that it would focus on making sequels, remakes, remasters, and spin-offs of older games such as Grave robbers, deus ex, Thief, and inheritance from Cain. It also announced that it would do “transmedia projects” like the upcoming one Grave robbers Anime series on Netflix.
my box reached out to Embracer Group for comment but did not receive an immediate response.
