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The Swedish gaming company Embracer Group AB is canceling a video game in the beloved Deus Ex series after two years of development and will lay off a number of employees as part of an ongoing initiative to cut costs, according to people familiar with the moves.
Eidos, the Montreal, Canada-based studio behind the game, will instead focus on an original franchise. The canceled Deus Ex project, which had not yet been announced, was slated to enter production later this year, said the people, speaking anonymously because they are not authorized to talk to the press.
The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Following a period of massive expansion during the pandemic, Embracer Group has lately been making widespread layoffs, game cancellations and studio closures.
The sci-fi Deus Ex series has been critically acclaimed and sold more than 14 million units worldwide. It was acquired by Embracer in 2022.
The IP they bought was largely neglected in the first place, so I’m not sure there’s much of a market for it. More likely they cast a large net with the properties they own, and the winners are the ones that survive the current economic conditions.
the thing is, cyberpunk 2077 released and did gangbusters (after perhaps the rockiest launch cycle in recent memory, but still. game sold well). Deus Ex taps into a lot of the same themes and aesthetics that got cyberpunk 2077 to sell well, it just seems like embracer doesn’t see it as a safe bet, and their definition of safe is informed heavily by their recent fuck-up with their sauid acquisition gambit. It’s a function of a bunch of executives with eyes bigger than their stomach and then having to ballast every possible IP they can manage in order to not ruin the ~shareholder value~ they’re working so hard to not shunt into the atmosphere.
Cyberpunk 2077 had the expectations of the Witcher 3 that a Deus Ex never had a prayer of catching, because at a macro level, those two games are not structured the same despite the shared DNA. Embracer probably doesn’t see it as a safe bet, because it’s not a safe bet in the current economic climate. Tomb Raider probably is. Gunfire Games is probably plenty safe in the wake of Remnant II, and I’m sure the developers of Titan Quest II, Alone in the Dark, Outcast: A New Beginning, and Tempest Rising are all hoping that fans of those genres are as hungry for the games they’re making as possible, because it will likely take a Remnant-sized success to keep them safe from layoffs. In the meantime, they seem to be spared, because it’s all hands on deck to make those games great before they release.