Google hires senior Assassin’s Creed devs for first Stadia studio

Google has made a group of senior Assassin’s Creed developers one of the first hires for its new Stadia games studio in Montreal, VGC understands.

Montreal’s Stadia Games and Entertainment’s studio is the streaming platform’s first original games studio, established by another former Assassin’s Creed developer, Jade Raymond, who is in charge of Stadia’s first-party games production.

Sébastien Puel has joined the company as director general of the studio. Puel was one of the key figures behind Assassin’s Creed and acted as the franchise’s executive producer for almost ten years, from Assassin’s Creed 2 to 2014’s Unity.

Meanwhile Francois Pelland has been appointed head of production for Google’s first-party game strategy.

Pelland was the exec director of development at Ubisoft Quebec, the studio that created Assassin’s Creed Syndicate under his watch. Pelland was also a senior producer for Assassin’s Creed 3 and exec producer for South Park: The Fractured but Whole.

Finally, veteran artist Mathieu Leduc has joined Google Stadia as an art director. Leduc was in charge of the art direction for the first two Watch Dogs games and was assistant art director for the original Assassin’s Creed.

Jade Raymond told GamesIndustry.biz in October that her first-party games team would make “a spectrum of bets” on Stadia with a “long-term view” to the development of content.

Raymond said she’s responsible for building out all of the exclusive content for Stadia and that this would come from “a few different first-party studios”, starting with Montreal.

“I’ve been making games for a while now, and wouldn’t trade the experiences I’ve had for anything,” she said in a statement announcing the Montreal operation.

“But we can do better. We can do more. At Stadia, we don’t believe in being ‘good enough.’ We believe in being more: More ambitious. More inclusive. More accessible. More immersive. More engaging.

“We’re bringing that mentality to Stadia Games and Entertainment, and now with our first studio, we’re looking for the best developers on the planet to join us.”

Stadia launched in 14 markets on November 19. Google confirmed ahead of release that a number of Stadia features would be missing at launch including Buddy Passes, family sharing, 4K streaming on PC and an achievements UI.