Several notable Stadia employees have followed Jade Raymond to the recently established Haven Entertainment Studios.
Former Stadia games bossRaymond announced Montreal, Canada-based Haven in March, shortly afterGooglesaid it wasclosing all of its internal game development teamsin order to focus on partnering with third-party studios.
Backed bySony Interactive Entertainment, the new studio from the veteranAssassin’s Creedproducer is set to create an original IP forPlayStation 5.
As noted onResetera, Raymond has been joined by six former Stadia employees, including Sébastien Puel, whose LinkedIn profile also lists him as one ofHaven’s co-founders.
Puel, who was most recently Stadia Games and Entertainment’s director general, was one of the key figures behind Assassin’s Creed and acted as the franchise’s executive producer for almost 10 years, from Assassin’s Creed 2 to 2014’s Unity.
Further reading
Corey May, former head of creative services and publishing at Stadia Games and Entertainment, is Haven’s new world/IP director. May was also the lead writer and narrative designer behind the original Assassin’s Creed game and its earliest sequels, before leavingUbisoftin 2015.
Haven’s new hires from Stadia also include Jonathan Dankoff as insights director, Erwann Le Rouzic and Francis Denoncourt as concept artists, and Pierre-Marc Bérubé as software engineer.
It was confirmed earlier this week that John Justice, formerly the VP and head of product for Stadia,had left the company too.
Questioned this week during the Epic vsApplecourt case,Epic GamesCEOTim Sweeneysaid theGoogle Stadiaservicehas been “significantly cut back”, as he understands it.
