Senior Assassin’s Creed developer Eric Baptizat has left Ubisoft after 16 years to work on an unannounced game for Electronic Arts’ Motive Studio, according to Axios.
Baptizat – who worked on hit Assassin’s Creed games like Black Flag, Origins, and Valhalla – joined EA Motive in April, according to his LinkedIn profile, but it’s only now that his move has been noted by the press. As Axios pointed out, this is a significant development because EA Motive has been in the news quite a bit lately and Baptizat has a number of hits under his belt.
After a turbulent period that resulted in the exit of founder Jade Raymond, EA Motive rebranded itself under the leadership of Patrick Klaus. In a lengthy update last year, Klaus noted that the studio is working on “several” unannounced projects alongside Star Wars: Squadrons. Then came Dead Space.
Last week, rumors started swirling that EA is “reviving” the Dead Space franchise and Motive Studio was on the task. The project is expected to be unveiled soon. Like other rumors, we took it with a grain of salt but a number of high profile publications including Gematsu and Eurogamer corroborated the reports. Given that the original report came from Venture Beat’s Jeff Grub, who accurately leaked a number of projects including Mass Effect Legendary Edition, we’re inclined to think there’s some truth to this rumor.
Of course, this doesn’t mean that Baptizat is working on Dead Space specifically. However, he is a significant hire regardless.
As usual, we’ll update our readers when we have more information.
[Source: Axios]
