The gaming industry continues to be hit by waves of massive layoffs, this time impacting Eidos, who had to let go of 97 employees as reports of Embracer Group cancelling their upcoming Deus Ex project, which had been in development for two years, surfaced.
The initial report came via Jason Schrier, who stated that the decision was to cut costs. Eidos would later share via social media that the decision to lay off almost 100 employees was due to the "global economic context."
The challenges of our industry and the comprehensive restructuring announced by Embracer have finally impacted our studio. The difficult decision has been made to let go 97 people from development teams, administration, and support devices
After their acquisition of a lot of former Square Enix studios such as Eidos and Crystal Dynamics in 2022, Embracer had a historic $2 billion deal collapse in early 2023, forcing them to go into panic mode, laying off employees left and right these past few months.
click to enlargeEmbracer shut down multiple studios, including Volition, developers of Saints Row, and Free Radical Design of TimeSplitters fame, laid off over 900 employees, and is reportedly looking to sell Gearbox to mitigate operation costs.
Sadly, the decision to not only cut the number of employees at Eidos and cancel their next instalment in the Deux Ex franchise was only a matter of time. Polygon reported in November that Embraced had scrapped over 15 unannounced projects from studios such as Amplifier, Freemode, Gearbox, PLAION, Saber, and THQ Nordic.
Embracer is currently trying to mitigate a debt of $1.4 billion as of November 2023, following a net sale increase of 13% thanks to internal reconstruction and the success of titles such as Remnant 2, which was published by Gearbox.
As for Deus Ex, fans will have to wait for quite some time for a new entry in the franchise, as the original report by Jason Schrier states that Eidos will shift focus to original IPs instead.
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