Tencent just killed a fledgling AAA open-world game studio before it could even release anything — "I am genuinely heartbroken"

Tencent, a colossal Chinese multimedia company and the world's largest game publisher, has shut down one of its fledgling game development studios, TiMi Montreal, before it could even release its very first title.

The news comes from Stephen Totilo of Game File, who has reported that a closure for the developer is imminent after his sources have been expecting one to come for weeks. One confirmed to him last week that a shutdown was impending, suggesting that the studio has now either already been shuttered or will be very soon.

Totilo also spotted a now-deleted post from a TiMi Montreal programmer that discussed the closure of the developer. In it, they noted that team members knew the axe was coming "for some time," but were still devastated even so. "I am genuinely heartbroken that the public will never get to experience what this team was capable of producing," they lamented.

TiMi Montreal — a studio formed under Tencent subsidiary TiMi Studio Group, which is known for games like Call of Duty: Mobile, Delta Force, and Pokémon UNITE, among others — was put together in 2021. It was "challenged" to develop "a AAA open world, service-focused video game for players to explore across multiple platforms."

Its creation came at the height of the pandemic, with quarantine spiking video game engagement and driving rapid expansion throughout the gaming industry. But those inflated engagement statistics didn't last in the long-term, resulting in an ongoing series of brutal layoffs and studio closures as companies seek to course-correct after this unsustainable growth.

TiMi Montreal seems to be the latest victim of these sharp cutbacks, with Tencent evidently deeming the team and/or what it was working on to either be too expensive or too unlikely to drive acceptable levels of profit once it was released.

The description of its canceled AAA open-world title as “service-focused" suggests the game would have been designed to rake in revenue in the long term over time, in a similar vein to live-service titles that receive frequent updates and "seasons" that introduce new content to keep players coming back.

These types of games are some of the most successful in the industry, but they're also incredibly risky to make since the market is saturated with them right now. Few titles show this as clearly as Highguard, the new live-service PvP shooter released last month that immediately nosedived and is now on life support after most of its developers were laid off (Tencent invested in Highguard, notably).

For these games to succeed as well as the likes of ARC Raiders has, they need to be built carefully and over time, with extensive feedback from players guiding their direction — and even then, as Battlefield 6's recent slump shows, poor live-service post-launch support can snuff out initial success like water to flame.

Tencent either didn't want to fully embrace that risk or felt the game TiMi Montreal was working on wouldn't find enough success. Regardless of its reason for the developer's closure, though, it's unfortunate that we'll never get to see what it was working on, and that yet another team has fallen victim to layoffs and cutbacks. I wish everyone from the studio the best of luck, and hope its workers land on their feet.

Yet another game studio closure

How do you feel about Tencent? What about its closure of TiMi Montreal, and the widespread layoffs and shutdowns that have been affecting the video game industry at large? Do you think it was a mistake to try and make a new live-service game? Let me know in the comments.

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