Eidos Montreal's general manager resigns citing "lack of courage" from Square Enix Europe

The general manager of Eidos Montreal, Stephane D'Astous, has announced that he resigned from the studio last Friday. In a statement made to Polygon , he criticised the developer's parent company, Square Enix Europe, over a "lack of leadership, lack of courage and the lack of communication".

"Since last year's financial short-coming performance of Square Enix Europe," D'Astous said, "we (HQ London and GM Eidos Montreal) have had growing and divergent opinions on what needed to be done to correct the situation. The lack of leadership, lack of courage and the lack of communication were so evident, that I wasn't able to conduct my job correctly. I realized that our differences were irreconcilable, and that the best decision was unfortunately to part ways."

D'Astous has been with the studio since its founding in 2007. Square Enix faced trouble back in March, when it was announced that they'd incurred "extraordinary loss" over the course of the financial year. At the time, their then-CEO stepped down, and in the months since, there have been lay-offs to both the publisher's LA studio , and Hitman developer IO Interactive .

Eidos Montreal had reportedly experienced years of office politics and internal strife during the development of their upcoming Thief revival.

We have contacted Square Enix for comment.

Phil Savage
Editor-in-Chief

Phil has been writing for PC Gamer for nearly a decade, starting out as a freelance writer covering everything from free games to MMOs. He eventually joined full-time as a news writer, before moving to the magazine to review immersive sims, RPGs and Hitman games. Now he leads PC Gamer's UK team, but still sometimes finds the time to write about his ongoing obsessions with Destiny 2, GTA Online and Apex Legends. When he's not levelling up battle passes, he's checking out the latest tactics game or dipping back into Guild Wars 2. He's largely responsible for the whole Tub Geralt thing, but still isn't sorry.

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