Eidos Montréal has canceled its long-running project codenamed Wildlands after years of development, and the decision comes alongside a major round of layoffs that has affected 124 employees while also marking the departure of studio head David Anfossi, which signals a difficult phase for the company.
Jason Schreier reported that the layoffs tied directly to a canceled game, which quickly raised questions about the scale and timing of the decision given how far along the project had progressed.
Wildlands faced years of troubled development
Tom Henderson shared further details about Wildlands, explaining that the project started back in 2019 and went through multiple setbacks, including four game engine changes and ongoing internal disagreements around the story direction, which slowed progress and increased development costs significantly.
The game reportedly entered its debugging phase, which usually indicates that core development has finished and teams are polishing and fixing issues before launch, and despite reaching that stage, the project still failed to move forward.
The report states that development costs had already crossed hundreds of millions of dollars, which likely added pressure on the publisher to make a final call.
Canceled game looked like
Wildlands was an open-world action-adventure game played from a third-person perspective, where players controlled a character named River, who belonged to a group called the Spiritbounds that used magical staffs to fight off evil spirits while traveling across the world on mythical creatures.
The main companion in the game was a giant moose-like creature named Redheart, which players could ride to explore the map and move across large environments.
Another setback for Eidos Montréal
This cancellation adds to a growing list of halted projects at the studio, including a new Deus Ex game, a Legacy of Kain revival, and a modern point-and-click title with turn-based combat, which shows a pattern of instability in recent years.
The studio’s last released title remains Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy from 2021, which received strong reviews but failed to deliver strong sales, and that outcome likely influenced later decisions.
Eidos Montréal also contributed to Playground Games’ Fable reboot, although reports indicate that involvement ended over a year ago, leaving the studio now looking toward its next project with uncertainty hanging over its future.
