A veteran voice actor who worked on Starfield, Deus Ex and dozens of other games explains why the video game industry is a “disaster” right now.
Starfield and Deus Ex voice actor Elias Toufexis laments the current state of the video game industry. After news of mass layoffs at Eidos Montreal, he called the industry a “disaster zone.” In the layoffs announced at the end of January, the Embracer Group-owned studio laid off 97 employees or more than 20% of its workforce.
The global pandemic of 2020 has been both a blessing and a curse for the video game industry.
While widespread closures drove the industry to unprecedented heights in terms of profits, this economic boom proved unsustainable, but not before many publishers gave the green light to a wide variety of projects, which they later decided to cancel as credit became more expensive. venture capital dried up while their own growth slowed.
One particularly high-profile consequence of this turnaround is the Embracer Group’s ongoing cost-cutting initiative. This began in June 2023 after the Swedish holding company lost a $2 billion investment. As a result, it decided to cancel several games and close some studios in its 12 operational groups.
The layoffs at Eidos Montreal are the latest result of this effort. It’s also said to have led to the cancellation of the new Deus Ex game, which has reportedly been in the works since 2022. Reflecting on this development, Elias Toufexis recently described the video game industry as currently a “disaster zone”. The industry veteran seemingly confirmed on Twitter on February 8 that the next instalment in the Deus Ex franchise has been cancelled. The Canadian-born actor also revealed that another “massive game” he was working on has been cancelled. While a third project, in which he was involved as both an actor and a director, was completely rebooted with a different team.
Isn’t Adam Jensen sure that he would have returned in the cancelled Deus Ex game?!
Toufexis explained that he is currently involved in “two or three” more projects. But he cynically predicted that they would all be trashed by the end of the week. Although not much was known about the recently abandoned Eidos title, Toufexis previously clarified that it is far from certain that we will see him reprising his iconic Deus Ex role, Adam Jensen, in the game. On the contrary, he suspected that the frozen project would feature another protagonist.
Regardless, the actor was furious about the cancellation because it meant “his friends at Eidos were fired,” as he said in a recent Reddit post.
In a later tweet, Toufexis clarified that he was just venting with his “disaster zone” comments. Noting that he is still lucky enough to be employed. Either way, he acknowledged that the video game industry is “in a weird place right now.” How long this weirdness will last is unknown, but as things stand, the more than a thousand layoffs at Embracer are still far from over.
None of Toufexis’ remaining projects have yet been announced as of February 2024. His most recent acting work dates back to Starfield 2023 and Star Trek: Resurgence, where he voiced Sam Coe and Galvan/Hadri.
Deus Ex got canceled. This other massive game I was both acting and directing on got canceled and a third game I was acting and directing on got reworked and now starting from scratch, whole new team.
The video game world is a disaster zone right now.
— ᴇʟɪᴀꜱ ᴛᴏᴜꜰᴇxɪꜱ 🖖 (@EliasToufexis) February 8, 2024
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