Tencent Confirms Closure of TiMi Montreal Studio: Five Years Without a Single Release

Tencent has quietly shut down TiMi Montreal, a studio under its TiMi Studio Group based in Quebec, Canada. Established in 2021, the studio operated for five years without releasing any game before its recent closure. The news first began circulating on LinkedIn last week, as multiple affected team members gradually posted about their departures.

TiMi Montreal was originally positioned as a development hub for “AAA open-world multiplatform games,” standing alongside TiMi Los Angeles and TiMi Seattle as the three pillars of TiMi’s North American presence. The studio was widely regarded by the industry as a strategic move by Tencent to attract talent from Ubisoft, with its most high-profile hire being Ashraf Ismail, former creative director of Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla. Ismail, who was dismissed by Ubisoft in 2020, joined TiMi Montreal in 2022. However, under his leadership, the studio still failed to produce any substantial work of its own and did not disclose any involvement in co-development for recent released projects.

To date, TiMi Montreal’s responsibilities primarily involved supporting inherited projects from TiMi and derivative works of existing mobile games, including Pokémon UNITE and Call of Duty: Mobile. The studio never announced any specifics regarding self-developed original projects.

The studio’s closure has prompted an outpouring of sentiment from team members on social media. A laid-off senior gameplay programmer wrote on LinkedIn, “Even though we all saw this coming, it’s still hard to accept the reality.” A senior designer added, “This team is not only exceptionally talented but also incredibly close-knit. This experience will stay with me for a long time, and I’m honored to have been a part of it.” Another affected programmer lamented, “It breaks my heart that players will never experience what this team could have created. It was an honor to work with so many talented people; this team’s level of professionalism and dedication was extraordinary.”

Notably, this is not the first contraction in TiMi’s North American layout. The Los Angeles-based Team Kaiju studio, which had recruited former core members of the Halo and Battlefield franchises, was already closed in 2023. According to an analysis by industry media Kotaku, Tencent’s recent adjustments to its North American studios reflect a cautious assessment of the escalating development costs in the United States. Concurrently, domestic competitors, including NetEase, have also reduced investments in multiple newly established overseas studios in recent years, indicating a strategic recalibration in the globalization efforts of Chinese gaming companies.