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.
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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.
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