Assassin's Creed Valhalla director leaves Ubisoft to join EA Motive
Motivated seller.
Assassin's Creed Valhalla game director, Eric Baptizat, has left Ubisoft to join EA Motive.
The seasoned director - who helped reboot the Assassin's Creed series as lead designer on Origins and director on Valhalla - had been with the French developer/publisher for 16 years, but left earlier this year to join Motive on an unannounced project.
Axios says "neither EA nor Baptizat are commenting on the move" (thanks, VGC), but we've reached out and will confirm as/when we hear back from either party.
It's a timely defection, as rumour has it Star Wars Squadrons developer EA Motive is working on the revival of an established, fan-favourite IP, thought by many to be a reimagining of celebrated horror sci-fi series, Dead Space. According to recent reports, EA plans to announce the project at its upcoming EA Play event in just a few weeks' time.
As Tom explained at the time, EA's Dead Space franchise has been mothballed since 2013, when Dead Space 3 launched to a lukewarm reception. Its addition of co-op, which completely changed the way the creepy sci-fi survival horror series played, was blamed on EA by fans at the time. Early ideas for a Dead Space 4 were subsequently shelved, and the series put on indefinite hiatus.