Eidos-Montréal celebrates its 15th anniversary
This year, we’re celebrating the 15th anniversary of Eidos-Montréal! Our studio was established back on February 15, 2007 and a lot has happened since then. Let’s look back on 15 years of innovation, creativity, passion and emotions with David Anfossi, head of studio.
Today marks the 15th anniversary of Eidos-Montréal, what are the biggest achievements of the studio?
In February 2007, we were tasked with the crazy mandate of bringing back dormant franchises from the Eidos Interactive catalog. We were a bit naive back then, so we decided to tackle the project of relaunching Deus Ex, which was already a legendary IP, while simultaneously laying the foundations of the studio. We had to build the team which take on this challenge, find offices, make technological choices, etc. When it released in 2011, Deus Ex: Human Revolution was a critical and commercial success. It instantly put us on the map as an AAA studio.
Eidos-Montréal’s ability to take establishes franchises and reinvent them by bringing our know-how and our identity became our trademark whether for Thief, Tomb Raider, and recently Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy. In parallel, we also grew our co-development capabilities and expertise to give a hand to our sister studio Crystal Dynamics on some of their productions.
Fifteen years later, we’ve launched 5 projects entirely developed by our teams, and 3 projects made in collaboration. But we also created a lasting organization and structure which allows our teams to express their creativity by crafting rich universes, unforgettable characters, as well as immersive stories powered by technological innovations.
Eidos-Montréal grew a lot in 15 years! What kind of changes does that mean in terms of organizational structure?
That’s true, a lot happened in 15 years! First, in terms of number of employees, we’re almost 500 today. Our growth was controlled over time, and our size has been rather stabled since a few years. In late 2020, we opened a new studio in Sherbrooke, which is specialized in accelerating technological innovation to support our video game projects. Eidos-Shanghai also joined our Eidos studios network, and brings us its support with its ties and expertise in Asia for external development and publishing.
Eidos-Montréal now focuses on its strength, which is content creation. We’re a multi-project, multi-site studio. The idea here is to let every entity express itself, while forming a coherent whole built around our values: people, courage, continuous improvement, and business savvy.
In the context of the pandemic, we established quicker organizational changes which we’ve been thinking about for a while. We approach each change in an iterative way, giving us the space to try, analyse, adapt and even abandon certain projects.
These past 15 years, we’ve worked hard on building the foundations of Eidos-Montréal, and now Sherbrooke and Shanghai. We leverage the collective intelligence of our teams to build the studio of tomorrow.
What are your projects at Eidos-Montréal for the next 15 years?
Here at Eidos-Montréal, we like to say that we craft emotions. We have the vocation of telling strong stories in an interactive medium. While we work in a domain where innovations are constant, our goal is to continue to create immersive experiences that leverage new technologies, with the ultimate objective of producing quality entertainment for everyone.
In parallel of innovating through our projects, we want to continue to innovate the way we make games and act as a company. It’s a new chapter for Eidos-Montréal and every member of our studio brings their contribution to build our future, all together. Join the adventure and check out the current openings on our Careers page.
