There is always a silver lining in every cloudy situation. Unfortunately, the cloud that hung over today was caused by a report published on Bloomberg by Jason Schreier. According to the article, Onoma, formerly known as Square Enix Montreal, will be closing its doors. The employees at Onoma, who had only recently relaunched the studio three weeks before, were completely taken aback by this news.
According to Schreier, Eidos Montreal, where some of Onoma staff will be transferred, is hard at work on a new Deus Ex game. This is the silver lining to the cloud of Onoma closure.
In a series of follow-up tweets to his initial report, Schreier confirmed that the Stranger Things-inspired kids on bikes game would be shelved, but Eidos recommitted to developing a new Deus Ex game.
However, because the game development is still in its early stages, there isn't much else to say about it at this time. According to reports, Eidos is also working on a new intellectual property that was recently rescoped, as well as co-developing games with Xbox, one of which is the upcoming instalment of the Fable series.
Eidos has only recently regained control of the intellectual property associated with Deus Ex. When Square Enix sold Eidos to Embracer Group in May, there was a lot of uncertainty about who owned the brands, which are usually as valuable as the studios that created them.
However, Square Enix was ultimately determined to retain ownership of the franchises. As a result, Crystal Dynamics and Eidos announced in September that they had formally acquired the Tomb Raider and Deus Ex franchises, paving the way for the development of additional games in these beloved series.