Eidos-Montréal laid off 124 employees on March 30, 2026, as announced in a LinkedIn post, with longtime studio head David Anfossi departing alongside the cuts. This marks the third straight year of significant layoffs at the Deus Ex developer: 75 jobs went in early 2025, following earlier reductions. The studio's statement attributes the reductions to 'evolving project needs,' affecting both production and support teams—a boilerplate explanation that does little to illuminate the underlying decisions.

Insider reports tie the layoffs directly to the cancellation of an unannounced open-world action-adventure game codenamed Wildlands, in development since early 2019 and nearly complete at the time of axing. Sources describe chronic development woes: four different game engines cycled through, persistent narrative conflicts, and a budget ballooning into the hundreds of millions. Embracer Group, which acquired the studio from Square Enix in 2022, reportedly deemed further investment unviable, pulling the plug despite playable footage suggesting a potential late-2026 launch.

The studio, which hasn't shipped an original title since Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy in 2021, has been assisting on projects like Grounded 2 and Fable while rumors swirl of a pivot to an Alien action-adventure. LinkedIn posts from affected developers express heartbreak over lost talent, while Reddit threads in r/Games and r/pcgaming decry the waste of years and resources. This latest restructure underscores a pattern: ambitious projects founder amid corporate calculus, leaving careers in the lurch.

The receipts— from Henderson's breakdowns to the studio's own sparse update—paint a studio adrift four years post-acquisition, with no clear path forward.