Gamer's Outpost LLC

by Sam Machkovech

On Monday, Ubisoft Toronto announced that its managing director, Jade Raymond, was parting ways with the game-making company to “pursue future opportunities separately.” The co-creator of the Assassin’s Creed series and executive producer of its first two games offered a statement within the company’s announcement, calling the exit “one of the hardest decisions of my career” while asking fans to “stay tuned for more on what’s next for me.”

During her ten-year tenure at Ubisoft, complete with production credits on titles like Watch Dogs and Splinter Cell: Blacklist, Raymond rose within the company’s leadership ranks. She was tasked in particular with growing the game studio’s Toronto division “to 800 employees by 2020,” according to her Ubisoft profile (already deleted by Monday morning). She talked openly about efforts to bring Ubisoft series like Assassin’s Creed to the big screen.

Long before a recent rash of anonymous backlash against women in the games industry, Raymond attracted negative attention for her efforts as a game maker, in spite of rarely making public comments about her gender affecting her work. (That continued on Monday, with Raymond’s Twitter feed mostly talking about her departure.) While she offered no hints about new games or companies, she responded to questions about her games-industry future by saying, “rest assured, I’m a lifer.”