The developer behind games such as Deus Ex: Mankind Divided and Guardians of The Galaxy, Eidos-Montreal, has announced that they are laying off 75 employees. The Embracer Group-owned studio shared this news via Linkedin, where it was explained that these layoffs were made as one of the company’s “Mandates” comes to an end. It was additionally stated that these terminations were not a reflection of the “dedication or skills” of there workforce.
It was stated in this release that:
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 Montreal continues to be committed to delivering on its upcoming projects that remain in development. Among these projects is the upcoming Xbox-owned IP Fable, which Eidos-Montreal is supporting Playground Games in the development of.
Embracer Group has become well known over the past few years for terminations and cancellations rather than releases, having gone on a massive acquisition tour in which they acquired Eidos-Montreal, Square Enix Montreal, and Crystal Dynamics from Square Enix, among many other studios. Being unable to support all these studios has seen the drop many, such as allowing Saber Interactive to buy their studio back, as well as closing Volition after three decades. Previously, Eidos-Montreal was stated to have a new Deus Ex in development, before it was announced last year to be cancelled, only for 97 employees to be terminated from the company at that time.
At the time of these acquisitions, Embracer CEO Lars Wingefors said that the publisher planned to help these studios “realize their ambitions,” a sentiment that hasn’t really materialized as of yet. Ultimately Embracer reorganized and divided into three standalone entities in their search for “winning formulas.” Additionally, earlier this week, Crystal Dynamics was hit with layoffs as well, with 17 workers made redundant to meet the “current business needs.”
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