Eidos Montreal’s upcoming Thief title is already shaping up to be one of the major releases of the coming year, with a lot of excitement surrounding the game following its reveal on the cover of Game Informer. However, it seems like the title has run into a host of problems that might land the game in some serious trouble and even influence its release date.
According to Polygon, “corporate politics, creative confusion and a lack of publisher oversight” have increased the game’s production costs, slowed down its creation and has even led to the departures of numerous senior and junior team members.
And if that doesn’t sound bad enough, "The vertical slice doesn't load inside Thief's current heavily modified version of Unreal Engine 3,” Polygon writes.
Moreover, Eidos Montreal used a lot of different programming tricks to run the GDC demo of Thief (like turning off non-playable character AI), and that the engine is having difficulty when there are too many characters on screen.
“Sources emphasized the high level of talent and enthusiasm of team members, many of whom came to work on Thief because of their love of the franchise. Those same sources cited team politics and conflicting visions as cause for many departures and setbacks,” Polygon further adds.
Thief has been in production at Eidos Montreal for about five years now, and is set for a 2014 release on the PC and next-gen consoles.
