Tencent Shuts Down TiMi Montreal Studio
▼ Summary
– Tencent has closed its TiMi Montreal studio, which operated for five years without releasing a single game.
– The closure was anticipated by employees and confirmed by staff posts on LinkedIn, despite a lack of official comment from Tencent/TiMi.
– The studio was announced in 2021 with the mission to develop AAA open-world, multi-platform games.
– Its creation was part of a broader expansion by Chinese giants like Tencent and NetEase to build western studios for console-style games.
– This closure reflects a wider retreat from that expansion strategy, as few games have resulted from these efforts.
The recent closure of Tencent’s TiMi Montreal studio marks a significant shift in the global gaming industry’s expansion strategy, highlighting the challenges faced by major publishers when establishing new development hubs abroad. The studio, which was announced with considerable fanfare in July 2021, has been shut down without ever releasing a title to the public. This move follows weeks of industry speculation and rumors that were ultimately confirmed when employees began posting about the closure on professional networking platforms.
A programmer from the studio shared on LinkedIn that the team had been aware of the impending shutdown “for some time,” expressing profound disappointment that their work would never reach players. “I am genuinely heartbroken that the public will never get to experience what this team was capable of producing,” the individual wrote. Other staff members affiliated with TiMi Montreal also posted about the closure. Representatives for Tencent and its TiMi Studio Group chose not to comment on the situation when contacted by media outlets.
The studio’s original mission was ambitious: to create AAA open world multi-platform games. Its establishment occurred during a period of rapid global expansion within the game development sector, a trend supercharged by a pandemic-era boom in gaming engagement and significant investment from major firms looking to capitalize on the growing market. Much of this expansion was driven by Chinese gaming powerhouses like Tencent and NetEase. These companies, having achieved massive success in their domestic and mobile markets, sought to build studios capable of producing high-quality console-style games for Western audiences.
This strategy involved aggressively setting up new studios in North America and Europe, often staffed with lead developers who had impressive resumes featuring major titles from established Western publishers. However, the tangible output from these costly ventures has been minimal. Over the past year and a half, a clear retreat from this aggressive overseas expansion model has become evident. Industry reports from approximately a year ago indicated that NetEase had already begun pulling funding from several of its Western studios, signaling a broader reassessment of the approach.
While specific details about the projects in development at TiMi Montreal have not been publicly disclosed, the studio’s founding premise was clear. It was part of a larger, high-stakes bet by Tencent to cultivate internal expertise in creating blockbuster, narrative-driven experiences for PC and consoles, a genre where Western studios have traditionally dominated. The closure underscores the considerable difficulties of transplanting corporate strategy and culture into new territories, especially when faced with the long, complex, and expensive development cycles typical of AAA game production. It represents a notable setback in one of the industry’s most watched strategic plays.
(Source: Game File)
