Tag Archives: montreal

Warner’s Montreal Studio is changing direction, and will no long be making triple-A titles at the development branch, but will be creating social and mobile games instead.

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Fresh off announcing yet another dev coup – the signing of Assassin’s Creed boss Patrice Désilets – THQ executive vice president of core brands Danny Bilson has been discussing the company’s development plans around THQ Montreal.

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Patrice Désilets’ decision to join THQ and create a studio in Montreal has seen an empathetic if surprised response from senior Ubisoft Montreal staff. Publicly, at least.

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THQ’s announced plans to open a development studio in Montreal. The new venture will create 400 jobs in the next five years.

Core games are to be the focus, with the outfit’s first title scheduled for 2013 ship.

“Montreal’s outstanding pool of creative digital media talent and its highly regarded university system makes this the ideal location to support our future product and technology development needs,” said Steve DeCosta, THQ’s core boss.

“Moreover, government support, in the form of reimbursable tax credits and other incentives, enabled Montreal to stand out as the best combination of creative talent and favorable economics of the cities we evaluated for our new studio.”

Full PR here.

Funcom has confirmed it’s to open a studio in Montreal. Dev boss Ragnar Tørnquist said last night that “a large and important part of the TSW [The Secret World - Ed] team will be located in Montreal. I’ll need to brush up on my French.”

The studio will be headed up by Ole Schreiner, previously Funcom’s VP of operations.

“We are excited about the opportunity that Montreal represents to our company, not only because of the great incentives offered by Quebec, but also the authorities’ strong commitment to training qualified video games personnel and building a video games cluster in Montreal and Quebec,” said Schreiner in a statement.

There’s loads more on Gama.

Oh dear. According to this, SCi has announced radical restructuring plans which are to include sizeable lay-offs and a move to Canada to take advantage of all those lovely tax breaks.

“The company plans to operate at a maximum head count of 800, a reduction of 25 percent, while the board has decided to cancel 14 projects currently under way as they will not generate an acceptable return on investment or are not of sufficient quality,” said that GI report.

The company plans to switch from a centrally controlled development and publishing model to a studio-led business focusing on its core products – Tomb Raider, Hitman, Championship Manager and Deus Ex.

“Our quality has slipped below acceptable standards and, through disappointing game development and working within an ineffective operating structure, we are failing to realise the commercial return our creative ability and our shareholders demand,” said the company. “Our infrastructure is too big and expensive for the scale of the business.”

Full thing through the link.

This Canadian newspaper report warns that the British Columbian games development industry is being damaged by (considerable) tax breaks offered in Quebec to companies that set up development studios there. Those in BC are worried that, unsurprisingly, all the talent’s upping sticks and setting up in Montreal.

“We would love to see the BC government step up and provide more incentives along the lines of what is offered in Quebec,” said Josh Holmes, Propaganda Games VP, based in British Columbia.

The reason developers flock to Montreal isn’t hard to understand. The Quebec government offered tax breaks of up to 50 percent on multimedia development in 1997, meaning huge studios have risen in Montreal in recent years from companies such as Ubisoft and EA. That percentrage was pulled back to 37.5 percent in 2003, but the lure is still, obviously, very strong.

Well worth a read.