As reported by IGN, Assassin’s Creed Hexe game director Benoit Richer has left the project. Richer is the second director-level developer to leave the team this year, with creative director Clint Hocking having departed in February.
Richer announced his career move on LinkedIn. According to the website for Servo Games, Richer is a cofounder of the new studio alongside three other former Ubisoft devs: Luc Tremblay, Danny Marcoux, and Alex Droun.
On February 25, we reported on the departure of Hexe’s creative director, Clint Hocking, who was immediately replaced with Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag director Jean Guesden. Ubisoft has not yet publicly shared Richer’s replacement as game director on Hexe.
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Any number of things could be going on behind the scenes of Hexe’s development, but back-to-back departures in a team’s senior leadership is rarely a sign things are going well. Hexe remains a complete mystery otherwise: It’s got distinctly witchy vibes, both with its name, as well as the creepy twig version of the Assassin log featured in its 2022 reveal trailer.
Ubisoft has described it as being a different sort of game from the open world, action-RPG era of Assassin’s Creed that began with 2017’s Origins, but that could mean any number of things. In the more near future of the series, we finally got to see Black Flag Resynced last week, the worst-kept secret in gaming. The long-rumored Assassin’s Creed 4 remake will release on July 9, and it will apparently still have blood, if you were worried.
Assassin’s Creed’s former overall franchise boss, Marc-Alexis Côté, left the series and Ubisoft last year, and that particular break-up hasn’t been pretty: Côté has sued Ubisoft alleging “constructive dismissal” (basically getting pressured into resigning through hostile working conditions). Côté is claiming $1.3 million Canadian in damages.
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