Gameloft Montreal is celebrating a big milestone.
The developer turns 25 this year, making it one of Canada’s older gaming studios. For much of that time, Gameloft Montreal, like its French parent company as a whole, was best known for mobile games like the Asphalt racers and Modern Combat first-person shooters.
But in the past several years, the developer made a pivot to focus on console and PC games. It was a venture that paid off in spades, with the company’s 2023 life simulation game, Disney Dreamlight Valley, garnering critical acclaim and millions of players. For many gamers, it’s a winning mix of approachable sim mechanics and a slew of fan-favourite Disney and Pixar characters from the likes of The Lion King, Frozen, Toy Story and Monsters, Inc.
Clearly, it’s been quite a journey for Gameloft Montreal, and the team reflected on it all in a special May 8 event. Besides serving as a commemoration of the 25th anniversary, the festivities marked the first time the team was at its new office at 7250 Rue Marconi. To ring in the occasion, studio head Matthieu Dupont was joined by various developers and local dignitaries.
Gameloft Montreal studio head Matthieu Dupont.
In an interview with MobileSyrup after the opening remarks, Dupont notes at how much the game development landscape in Montreal — and Quebec as a whole — has changed since Gameloft opened up shop in the province.
“We’ve been here for 25 years, and the industry grew in Quebec and in Montreal during these 25 years. Because at the beginning, there was a political decision of doing tax credits, which installed Ubisoft and Gameloft right after. And then we grew and attracted other talents,” says Dupont.
“So what makes it unique right now is really this ecosystem of big studios, medium studios, small studios, and also the fact that people change jobs and bring expertise from one studio to another. We learn from each other, we do conferences together, etc… So it’s really kind of unique to have this here. I know in Ontario, it’s also growing, so it’s very interesting. But I think the talent pool is really wide and it’s why there are so many companies here today.”
It’s a great point. Two of Canada’s biggest developers, Ubisoft Montreal (Splinter Cell, Assassin’s Creed) and Behaviour Interactive (Dead by Daylight), opened in 1997 and 1992, respectively. It’s only in the years since that many more big companies have established roots in the province, like Eidos (Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy), Warner Bros. (Batman: Arkham Origins), EA (Dead Space), Bethesda (Starfield) and Larian (Baldur’s Gate 3). This has helped Quebec become one of the top five largest development hubs in the world, with nearly 300 studios and over 15,000 employees currently active in the province, per the Entertainment Software Association of Canada.
A provincial breakdown of the number of game development studios in Canada. (Image credit: Entertainment Software Association of Canada)
Gameloft Montreal alone says it’s employed around 2,700 people in its quarter-century in business, with nearly 400 working at the company today. On top of that, the company invested nearly $40 million into a Montreal data centre that created dozens of jobs and also helps power the entire Gameloft portfolio.
But it’s that major switch from mobile to PC and console that’s the biggest point of pride for Dupont.
“It was not easy — lots of challenges to actually adapt our games there,” he says. “I’m actually a PC/console gamer at heart, and I felt like the mobile gaming industry did change, even though it’s younger. I think it changed more than the PC/console industry with free to play, live service, more focused on user acquisition, [etc], other than — maybe sometimes — fun core production values, which were the strengths of Gameloft Montreal. So I’m happy that by doing this pivot, we actually are more aligned with the market, with our own strengths internally, with our team that really are craftsmen. That’s what I’m the most proud of.”
Of course, there’s no guarantee that a game based on a popular franchise like those found in Disney Dreamlight Valley would be a success. After all, even a game based on another massively beloved franchise, Marvel’s Avengers, failed to survive. For Dupont, the “secret” to Disney Dreamlight Valley‘s success was understanding exactly who it’s for, rather than trying to appeal to everyone.
Disney Dreamlight Valley. (Image credit: Disney/Gameloft Montreal)
“We really focused on our core audience, which are — spoiler — Disney fans, mainly, and life simulation fans. But on the team who made this game, there were a lot of Stardew Valley and Animal Crossing fans, actually, that really knew the genre. And we also had Disney fans. So we thought when we did the pitch that it was one of these games, while the concept, the core gameplay, made total sense with the IP, which is not always the case, I feel sometimes the IP might be misaligned based on the core gameplay. So here we thought it really made sense,” he says.
“And we really made this game for life sim and Disney fans, and we really put easter eggs in there that Disney fans recognized, and we really try to improve the mechanics of Animal Crossing and these games to make them more accessible, more quest-driven. So we really worked on the gameplay. It’s not just an Animal Crossing clone; it’s something where we tried to innovate.” He adds that it was important to maintain a cadence of regular content updates, which includes new cosmetics, decorative items and animal companions to full expansions, like last November’s The Storybook Vale.
Alongside Disney Dreamlight Valley, Gameloft Montreal has been toiling away on an untitled Dungeons & Dragons game. Unveiled last year, the game will be set in the core D&D setting of Forgotten Realms and feature “survival, life simulation and action” elements with “unique cooperative gameplay.” So far, though, the only thing Gameloft Montreal has actually shown from the game is this teaser image:
Naturally, then, he’s still not ready to talk in detail about the game. He did note, however, that it’s the perfect time for Gameloft Montreal’s game, given that D&D as a whole is “on the rise” thanks to the likes of Baldur’s Gate, the popular Critical Role web series, and more people playing the tabletop game.
He adds that Gameloft Montreal’s genre-bending approach should help make its D&D game stand out.
“Our strengths coming from Disney Dreamlight Valley, the life stream experience we gathered, we feel is also close and adjacent to the survival mechanic that we want to put in the game. So the game will really be a hybrid of a survival life sim experience. And we feel within D&D, when you play the tabletop, of course, there is combat, there is all of that, but it’s also the banter, it’s also the relationship with the other players. So it’s a multiplayer game as well,” he says.
“And we feel that we are gonna have strong characters also in the game that really embody these D&D classes. I think it has a lot of potential, and it exists in a different genre than Baldur’s Gate 3, which is a turn-based RPG. Of course, we have RPG elements in it, but it’s gonna be in its own lane.”
While he can’t say more just yet about D&D, Dupont does note that he’s excited for Gameloft to continue to push into the console and PC space in the years to come.
“Our focus is on this core PC/console platforms, where I think the audience might be also different from mobile. The expectations are different — higher on some stuff, different on others. And we’ve really made this switch, and the plan is DDV on PC console, D&D will also be PC/console, and a few other games as well. So we’re really going to continue on this market and try to stand out for players as great developers of PC and console games.”
Disney Dreamlight Valley is available on PlayStation 4 and 5, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, PC, iOS, Mac and Apple TV.
MobileSyrup may earn a commission from purchases made via our links, which helps fund the journalism we provide free on our website. These links do not influence our editorial content. Support us here.
