After news that Embracer is canceling an upcoming Deus Ex title this week, the star of the previous entries Elias Toufexis claimed that no one had contacted him over the supposed years of development, suggesting the game wouldn’t even feature prior protagonist Jensen.
Swedish gaming conglomerate Embracer Group has canceled the new Deus Ex title supposedly in the works for over two years and has laid off nearly a hundred employees at its development studio Eidos Montreal, as first reported by Bloomberg on Jan. 29. Shortly after the news was made public, Toufexis, the iconic voice behind one of Deus Ex‘ most iconic characters and protagonists, said that no one from Eidos Montreal had contacted him in the past two years, which may imply the studio was working on an entirely new story and protagonist and pivoting away from the stories of Human Revolution and Mankind Divided.
Even so, Toufexis was more emotional and disgruntled at Embracer’s decision to lay off staff and the cancelation of the Deus Ex project than his supposed lack of involvement anyway. “I’m more pissed for all the people getting laid off. This industry is fucked with this stuff,” he wrote on Twitter.
Whereas Eidos Montreal likely won’t continue working on Deus Ex, the studio is still developing an unannounced game and supposedly a new IP, according to PCGamer. We’ll have to wait and see exactly what this may involve, and the layoffs may imply a refocus within the studio to this new IP, though it just might be a continuation of Embracer’s spree of shutdowns that have continued incessantly in the last year or so.
Eidos Montreal has been part of Embracer Group since 2022 and saw the release of several big-name titles including the aforementioned Deus Ex series, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, and 2020’s Marvel’s Avengers which officially shut down back in September 2023.
Fans across the gaming world are fuming with news of layoffs dropping seemingly every day, with more than 6,000 jobs lost in the industry due to studio downsizing in January alone. How this will affect gaming in the long run, no one knows, but the future certainly looks dark for the wider industry—at least in the interim.
