How A Promising Game Studio Closed Without Ever Releasing A Single Game

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The video game industry has always been challenging. For every popular game, many more projects are cancelled or left incomplete. This makes it understandable why people sometimes question the choices made by large gaming companies, especially when studios are closed down even after a game does well – if the profits aren’t high enough to satisfy those in charge, the studio may still be shut down.

However, each of these decisions actually has significant negative consequences. It harms companies, is devastating for the developers who work on these projects, and ultimately disappoints players. The recent closing of TiMi Montreal is a good example. While the studio hadn’t released a game since its founding in 2020, the closure is still unfortunate for everyone involved and points to a larger problem within the gaming industry.

Why TiMi Montreal Was Shuttered Without Ever Releasing A Game

After five years in operation, TiMi Montreal has closed its doors without ever launching a game. The studio, founded by former Assassin’s Creed creative director Ashraf Ismail, was developing a large-scale, open-world game for consoles and PCs, but it now appears that project has been cancelled. Tencent, the parent company of TiMi Studio Group, made the decision to close the Montreal location. Although other TiMi studios have released mobile games, the game being developed in Montreal was expected to be a much more ambitious title.

It appears Tencent decided to end development of their project after five years, likely due to the extensive time and resources invested. Senior gameplay programmer Alvaro Fernandez Luzuriaga expressed deep disappointment, stating he was “genuinely heartbroken” that the public wouldn’t get to see what the team had created. Unfortunately, this isn’t an isolated incident. Wildlight Entertainment, the developers of Highguard, recently laid off staff shortly after their game launched, and PlayStation closed Bluepoint Games, the studio behind remakes like Shadow of the Colossus.

Both of those studios at least managed to release their games, but the project TiMi Montreal was working on appears to be canceled and lost forever. We don’t know what the game was about, or if any parts of it will ever be used in other projects. This is disappointing, and it highlights a significant problem the gaming industry is facing right now.

The Collapse Of TiMi Montreal Speaks To The Challenges Facing The Games Industry

Creating video games has always been expensive, but today’s industry is caught between small, independent titles and huge, blockbuster games. These big-budget games have enormous development costs, and publishing them adds even more expense. That’s why even successful games, like Borderlands 4, a top seller in 2025, can be considered failures by the companies that make them. Major game studios need these titles to be huge hits, or they risk losing funding and being closed down.

The situation with TiMi Montreal is a really tough one for everyone. The team poured years of work and creativity into their game, only to have it cancelled due to a business decision. This is a significant loss for Tencent, who invested a lot of money into a project that will never see a return. And it’s disappointing for players who might have loved the game and made it a success – or even just a beloved favorite. That’s the thing about games: you never know which one will capture someone’s imagination.

It really hits hard when a game just vanishes – whether it’s something lost to time or a project that never even saw the light of day. It’s a tough pill to swallow, because at the end of the day, game development is still a business and needs to show results. I heard about TiMi Montreal, and it’s a shame – they might have been working on something amazing, but if it never gets released, none of that matters. Honestly, the studio closing feels like a total loss. They won’t get a chance to prove themselves to us players, or to the people funding them, and that’s just sad. It’s becoming way too common in the gaming world, and unless things change, we’re probably going to see a lot more of this, which isn’t good for anyone.

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2026-02-28 22:17