Following a recent report indicating that Microsoft had given Arkane Lyon until November 13th to find a buyer for the studio at the risk of being shut down, the company has now extended this deadline. In a statement to PCGamer, a Microsoft representative has said that the necessary consultation period that Arkane Lyon is currently undergoing has been extended by a full month, and that its deadline has been pushed back to December 13th.
The representative noted that the studio was still doing development work, likely pointing to Marvel’s Blade, and that this work would continue in the meantime while a new buyer was being found.
“We have extended the consultation period by one additional month as we explore options, including finding a partner to support the studio through the development work still ahead. This is a defined extension, and we remain committed to keeping the Works Council informed throughout the process.”
Currently, the closure of Arkane Lyon puts around 217 jobs at risk. French union representatives have referred to Xbox’s treatment of the studio as “incoherent”, with sentiment at the studio having turned into a “very great anger”. Representatives have also noted that Arkane Lyon continues to be in good health, and that work on Marvel’s Blade has been going well. Along with this, developers at the studio are also quite confident about the game, believing that it is going to be successful when it finally comes out.
Arkane Lyon needing to find itself a new buyer is part of Xbox’s wider cost-cutting manoeuvres that it started back in July. Xbox CEO Asha Sharma had announced that the company was cutting around 1,600 jobs, with 1,600 more cuts planned before the end of the fiscal year. Along with this, she also confirmed that Xbox was divesting itself of four of its studios – Double Fine Productions, Undead Labs, Compulsion Games, and Ninja Theory. At the time, she had said that Xbox was trying to figure out plans for Arkane Lyon.
These job cuts and studio divestitures have seemingly already started paying off for Xbox, with Sharma revealing during a recent town hall meeting that the company had begun to “return to growth” after a period spent in “freefall” due to bad decisions made surrounding Game Pass.
“We’re making the right decisions to reinvest in the business after an all-time low; we’ve started to return to growth, more than 2 to 3 times what we were, and we expect that to continue.”
The “all-time low” described by Sharma refers to the mass exodus of Game Pass subscribers following Xbox’s decision to raise the price for the subscription service last year. This was done due to the company losing out on revenue that would have been generated by the yearly Call of Duty releases at the time. Earlier this year, the company made the decision to stop including Call of Duty games on day one of their release into the service.
As for Arkane Lyon, the studio’s original founder, Raphael Colantonio, had joked about potentially buying the studio. “Regarding Arkane… how much? I’m asking for a friend,” he wrote in a social media post aimed at Sharma.
