Avalanche has officially announced that it is shutting down two of its studios in the North American region, and both Montreal and New York are closing their doors. This is far from the first studio that is cutting back, as the last year or two have been very difficult for the entire industry. According to the press release, Avalanche will be laying off around 50 employees which adds up to almost 10 percent of the whole company. The last 2 years have seen over 20,000 people be subjected to mass layoffs in different companies of every size.
In the case of Avalanche, one of the studios being closed isn’t even that mature. Although the Avalanche New York Studio is older, the Montreal Studio opened in October 2023, meaning it has only been around for 8 months and is already closing up shop. The company is shutting down both studios in the North American region but will continue to operate through its other studios in Malmo, Stockholm, and Liverpool.
For the uninitiated, Avalanche Studios has been around since 2003 and is best known for making the Just Cause series which started out in 2006, putting the relatively new Swedish studio on the map. The series ended up getting four entries at the time of writing with a fifth one reportedly in the works. In later years the studio made games like theHunter and Rage 2.
But the widely considered crowning achievement of the team has to be Mad Max, the post-apocalyptic open-world game that came out in 2015. Still considered a hidden gem by fans, it allows players to create their own car and use it to wreak havoc in the barren landscape through a narrative-driven adventure.
Avalanche also owns other studios like Systemic Reaction and Expansive Worlds AB, both of which will not be impacted by the layoffs and closures. Just Cause will continue to stick around in the form of a live-action adaptation, and these closures will not have any affect on that project.
