{"id":492394,"date":"2026-02-22T17:13:18","date_gmt":"2026-02-22T17:13:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/492394\/"},"modified":"2026-02-22T17:13:18","modified_gmt":"2026-02-22T17:13:18","slug":"tencent-closes-timi-montreal-game-studio","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/492394\/","title":{"rendered":"Tencent closes TiMi Montreal game studio"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/$s_!2Zac!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc08011c7-9740-4fbc-b059-564071a00bf4_1872x844.png\" data-component-name=\"Image2ToDOM\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" class=\"image-link image2 is-viewable-img can-restack\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/https:\/\/substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com\/public\/images\/c08011c7-9740-4fbc-b059-564071a00bf4_1872.jpeg\" width=\"1456\" height=\"656\" data-attrs=\"{&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https:\/\/substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com\/public\/images\/c08011c7-9740-4fbc-b059-564071a00bf4_1872x844.png&quot;,&quot;srcNoWatermark&quot;:null,&quot;fullscreen&quot;:null,&quot;imageSize&quot;:null,&quot;height&quot;:656,&quot;width&quot;:1456,&quot;resizeWidth&quot;:null,&quot;bytes&quot;:769866,&quot;alt&quot;:null,&quot;title&quot;:null,&quot;type&quot;:&quot;image\/png&quot;,&quot;href&quot;:null,&quot;belowTheFold&quot;:false,&quot;topImage&quot;:true,&quot;internalRedirect&quot;:&quot;https:\/\/www.gamefile.news\/i\/188797726?img=https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc08011c7-9740-4fbc-b059-564071a00bf4_1872x844.png&quot;,&quot;isProcessing&quot;:false,&quot;align&quot;:null,&quot;offset&quot;:false}\" alt=\"\"   fetchpriority=\"high\" class=\"sizing-normal\"\/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Tencent has shut down its TiMi Montreal studio without it releasing a game in the five years of its existence. <\/p>\n<p>Game File sources had indicated for weeks that a closure was coming, but I had been unable to corroborate firmly enough to publish. The rumor resurfaced again on Friday when a source told me shutdown was imminent. <\/p>\n<p>And now I\u2019ve spotted that, on Friday, a programmer at TiMi Montreal <a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/posts\/fernandezluzuriaga_today-timi-montreal-is-officially-closing-share-7430638121156784128-RAMk\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">posted<\/a> on LinkedIn that the studio had officially closed. Workers had been aware this was coming \u201cfor some time,\u201d they wrote, but added that \u201cI am genuinely heartbroken that the public will never get to experience what this team was capable of producing.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Others affiliated with the studio also posted about the closure on LinkedIn.<\/p>\n<p>Reps for Tencent\/TiMi did not provide comment when contacted Friday or again today.<\/p>\n<p>TiMi Montreal was <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gamespress.com\/TiMi-Studio-Group-Opening-Game-Development-Studio-in-Montreal\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">announced in July 2021<\/a>, with a mission \u201cto create AAA open world multi-platform games.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>That news came amidst rapid expansion of game studios worldwide, super-charged by the pandemic-era boom in gaming and global investors\u2019 desire to capitalize. <\/p>\n<p>A significant amount of the expansion at the time was fueled by Chinese gaming giants NetEase and Tencent, firms with massive success in their home region and on mobile that saw opportunities to build studios that could succeed with more console-style games. Both firms aggressively stood up studios in the west, often with lead developers who had big-budget game releases from western publishers on their resume. But few games have come from those efforts and a retreat from that strategy has been evident over the past 18 months. (I reported <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gamefile.news\/p\/netease-studio-cuts\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">almost exactly a year ago<\/a> that NetEase has been pulling funding from many such studios in the west.)<\/p>\n<p>Details of what Tencent\u2019s TiMi Montreal was working on have not surfaced, but the ambition behind the studio was obvious:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tencent has shut down its TiMi Montreal studio without it releasing a game in the five years of&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":492395,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194292],"tags":[49,48,2338],"class_list":["post-492394","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-montreal","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-montreal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492394","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=492394"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492394\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/492395"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=492394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=492394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=492394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}