Stadia loses former key Assassin’s Creed talent to Jade Raymond’s Haven Studios

Several notable Stadia employees have followed Jade Raymond to the recently established Haven Entertainment Studios.

Former Stadia games boss Raymond announced Montreal, Canada-based Haven in March, shortly after Google said it was closing all of its internal game development teams in order to focus on partnering with third-party studios.

Backed by Sony Interactive Entertainment, the new studio from the veteran Assassin’s Creed producer is set to create an original IP for PlayStation 5.

As noted on Resetera, Raymond has been joined by six former Stadia employees, including Sébastien Puel, whose LinkedIn profile also lists him as one of Haven’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.

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Former Stadia games boss Jade Raymond announces new studio backed by PlayStation

Haven will create an original IP for PS5

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 leaving Ubisoft in 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 vs Apple court case, Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney said the Google Stadia service has been “significantly cut back”, as he understands it.