Assassin's Creed Valhalla game director departs Ubisoft for EA Motive

Eric Baptizat, a longtime Ubisoft developer and the game director for Assassin's Creed Valhalla, has departed the French company to instead join up with EA Motive. Before his recent departure, Baptizat spent a total of 16 years at Ubisoft and worked on several games in the Assassin's Creed series, including Black Flag and Origins.

According to Axios, Baptizat actually made the move a few months back and started at Motive in April. His new role sees him as game director at the EA-owned studio on a yet-unannounced project.

The move comes at a bit of a transitional time for EA Motive. Earlier this year, the studio reportedly endured the cancellation of a project that had been in the works for over half a decade (via RPS). Motive is also currently rumored to be working on a revival of a dormant EA IP that some suspect could be Dead Space.

It's another notable departure from Ubisoft, and one that was kept significantly quieter than other high-profile exits made within recent memory. Baptizat's decision to depart the Assassin's Creed studio follows similar decisions from the likes of Charlie Guillemot, Remi Pellerin, and Alexandre Parizeau as well as the misconduct-related firings of Tommy Francois and Ashraf Ismail all within the last year.