Assassin's Creed Valhalla director leaves Ubisoft to join EA Motive

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.

Eurogamer News Cast: who won E3 2021? Watch on YouTube

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.