"Greenshields is jealous" - Stéphane D’Astous

Eidos Montréal’s GM reacts to negative comments

Posted 5 years ago By - Jay Acevedo

Yesterday, we reported Mark Greenshield’s comments about how the tax credits offered in Quebec seemed to have made Montreal an inefficient place to operate a video game studio.

Game Focus investigated the issue and got a hold of Stéphane D’Astous, Eidos Montréal’s General Manager. In an exclusive interview, he expressed his dismay towards Greenshields comments, noting that Greenshields is clearly showing his frustration from not succeeding in Quebec during his seven year stint in Montréal with DC Studios. “He’s talking jealous and that’s sad”, said D’Astous. “I’ve read his comments and it made me smile”.

According to him, Mr. Greenshields has totally missed the boat by declaring that Montreal’s tax environment has skewed the region’s industry towards large-scale projects only with large number of unskilled developers.

“That’s untrue. There’s a total misunderstanding of Quebec’s methods of attracting developers to Montréal. When people (in Europe particularly) talk about the gaming industry in Quebec and Canada, all they pinpoint is the tax credit, which is only a small part of the whole equation”, said D’Astous during our phone call conversation. “The low cost of company operations, the talent, the growing of multimedia educational institutions and the cultural values between Europe and Quebec are all part of the success equation and we got that from the beginning.”

“Many AAA games in the industry were produced in Montréal for the past couple of years thanks to all of these assets. For instance, Ubisoft has many AAA games under their belt (Rainbow Six, Assassin’s Creed, Splinter Cell), independent studio A2M (Artificial Mind and Movement) are developing WET, EA had a phenomenal success with the release of Army of Two and we’re working on Deux Ex 3. We all have excellent assets to work with (in Québec) and more companies will continue to take a peek at what we’re doing.”

Nowadays, Quebec isn’t only known as the “mecca of game developing” but also as a big player in the movie industry. “The Government of Quebec created this tax credit program ten years ago with the intention of becoming one of the biggest entertainment and technological leaders in the world. They were visionaries and they’ve succeeded greatly.”

Source : Game Focus

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