90%
Highly Likely
This week, Canadian developer Eidos Montréal suffered another major round of layoffs, cutting 124 jobs and losing its long-time Studio Head, David Anfossi. Shortly after the news broke, Jason Schreier added that it was related to a game cancellation, and now Insider Gaming has provided more color on that project.
This was the open world action/adventure game that, according to Tom Henderson, was supposed to launch in 2026. Codenamed Wildlands, it began development in 2019, before the global pandemic, and underwent four game engine changes, as well as major internal conflicts over its narrative direction.
As a result of all these issues, the game's development had already cost hundreds of millions of dollars. Yet, it was reportedly almost complete and was in the "debugging phase", according to Henderson. The insider speculates the decision to cancel it came from the parent company Embracer Group rather than Eidos Montréal itself.
The report even shares a little bit about the game. Wildlands was an open world action/adventure game played in third-person, in which players took control of a character named River. River belonged to a group of teenagers called the Spiritbounds who could fend off evil spirits with their magical staffs and ride mythical creatures. The protagonist's companion was a giant moose-like animal called Redheart, which River could ride to navigate the map.
Unfortunately, this is just the latest cancellation for Eidos Montréal. The studio previously cancelled a new Legacy of Kain game, a new Deus Ex game, and a modern point-and-click game with turn-based combat. To this day, its most recent game release is Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy, which launched in October 2021 and, despite being a very good game, did not sell very well.
Eidos Montréal also helped Playground Games with their Fable reboot, which must have given them some financial security, but their involvement in the soon-to-be-released game reportedly ended over a year ago. Hopefully, their next project will have better luck; we've seen far too many historic game development studios being shut down lately.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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