Life is Strange and Vampyr developer Dontnod is opening a new international studio in Canada

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"We will be able to envision even more ambitious titles"

(Image credit: Dontnod)

Life is Strange and Vampyr developer, Dontnod, has revealed it is opening a new studio in Montréal, Canada.

The first of the company's international sites, the developer says it will enable its 250+ team – the bulk of which is currently based in Paris, France – to grow. According to video game business site GI.biz, the studio is already looking to populate the new team and is actively recruiting for "a diverse staff" that can "create games that reflect that diversity", and indicated that the new venture will take on a new, as yet unannounced project.

"We are delighted to share our plans of expansion with the opening of this new office in Montréal, completing the talented team working out of Paris," said Dontnod CEO Oskar Guilbert.

"Our goal is to create video games as close as possible to our community's expectations. With this new international team, we will be able to envision even more ambitious titles and keep writing wonderful stories for our players."

Dontnod CEO Guilbert recently explained that the success of the comparatively smaller studio comes from playing to the strengths of its scale. 

"You cannot do a massive open world with a big city,"  Guilbert told GamesRadar+ recently. "You have to cleverly adapt to the range. For Vampyr, we focused on the NPCs and the psychology of the vampire interacting in the world, with the non-player characters.

As Leon reported at the time, how Vampyr treated its city – focusing on people, relationships, and consequences, instead of a large open world – also showed how these studios can be creative and inventive in a way larger studios can't or won't risk. According to Guilbert the benefits of scale "allow [Dontnod] to give some freedom to the team, because, within the constraint of budget, or the number of people which are in their team, they can do whatever they want." 

Vikki Blake
Vikki Blake
Weekend Reporter, GamesRadar+

Vikki Blake is GamesRadar+'s Weekend Reporter. Vikki works tirelessly to ensure that you have something to read on the days of the week beginning with 'S', and can also be found contributing to outlets including the BBC, Eurogamer, and GameIndustry.biz. Vikki also runs a weekly games column at NME, and can be frequently found talking about Destiny 2 and Silent Hill on Twitter.