Tencent reportedly shutter open world game studio which had drafted in former Assassin’s Creed director

Tencent have reportedly shut down their TiMi Montreal studio, set up back in 2021 with the goal of creating multi-platform open world games. In those five years, the studio haven’t shipped any games, but had brought on former Assassin’s Creed creative director Ashraf Ismail. Ismail was reportedly fired by Ubisoft following an investigation into misconduct, with the developer having been accused of taking advantage of his status to engage in extramarital relationships.

Game File first reported TiMi Montreal’s closure, citing a LinkedIn post from a programmer at the studio. According to the publication, this post asserted that staff had been aware of the impeding closure “for some time” and addded “I am genuinely heartbroken that the public will never get to experience what this team was capable of producing.” Links to the post now load to a message which reads “this post cannot be displayed”.

I’ve contacted Tencent for comment. Ashraf Ismail, whose LinkedIn profile lists him as having been a creative director at Timi Montreal since March 2021, contains no references to the studio being closed as of writing.

While the wider Tencent-backed TiMi Studio Group which this Montreal studio was part of has had a large focus on mobile games – such as Age of Empires Mobile, Pokémon Unite, and Call of Duty: Mobile – the Montreal studio was launched with the specific goal of creating an original “AAA open world, service-focused video game for players to explore across multiple platforms”. PC and consoles were first on the list of places for said game to hit, though TiMi Montreal hadn’t announced any such game. Meanwhile, TiMi Studio Group have at least published a fairly high-profile shooter on PC in the past couple of years, in the form of Team Jade’s Delta Force.

TiMi Montreal’s closure comes as we’ve seen Chinese giants cut back the substantial efforts they made at Western expansion around the Covid pandemic, with Tencent rival NetEase having made headlines for doing so.