Media: Tencent Quietly Shut Down Studio Led by Assassin's Creed IV Director
The publication Game File drew attention to a now-deleted LinkedIn post signaling the closure of TiMi Montreal. As journalist Stephen Totilo noted, his sources had previously repeatedly claimed that "liquidation was inevitable."
The post about TiMi Montreal's closure was published by a programmer from the division. According to him, employees expected this to happen sooner or later. But the most bitter part, as the former employee said, is that "people will never see what we were capable of as a team."
Neither TiMi Montreal itself nor its owner Tencent have provided any comments so far.
TiMi Montreal was established five years ago as a division of TiMi Studios Group. At that time, the team was tasked with creating an ambitious open-world AAA live-service game. Apparently, this task was never completed — TiMi Montreal did not release a single game.
TiMi Montreal was led by Ashraf Ismail — a manager of many Ubisoft projects. He served as game director for Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag and Assassin’s Creed Origins, and as creative director for Assassin’s Creed Valhalla. He joined TiMi Montreal in 2022, after being fired from Ubisoft two years earlier for abuse of power.
Tencent has other connections with Ubisoft. For example, the Chinese giant participated in the creation of a Ubisoft subsidiary — Vantage Studios.