Fallout 4 developer Bethesda Game Studios is formally expanding into Canada by opening a new studio in Montreal, Quebec dedicated to working on projects across mobile, PC and console platforms.
What’s notable about this opening is that it’s Bethesda Game Studios’ first major expansion since the studio was spun out from parent game company Bethesda Softworks in 2002.
Since then the studio has released Morrowind, Fallout 3, Skyrim (pictured) and now Fallout 4 (plus its remarkably successful F2P mobile game Fallout Shelter) to increasing critical and commercial success. Evidently it had already been working with developers in Montreal for some time, and now it’s pulling some of those folks together under the moniker of Bethesda Game Studios Montreal.
“We’ve worked with some very talented developers in Montreal for a long time, and decided it was time to open a studio there,” BGS frontman Todd Howard stated in a press release announcing the new studio.
BGS Montreal is expected to count more than 40 people among its ranks and will by studio director (and former Behaviour Interactive exec) Yves Lachance, who previously held an executive credit on MachineGames’ Bethesda-published Wolfenstein: The New Order and served as executive producer of Fallout Shelter.
It’s also worth mentioning that Quebec is a hotbed of game development due to its favorable tax breaks for game developers, which were reinstated this year after the government threatened to slash them in 2014.