EA Motive founder Jade Raymond departs EA

Jade Raymond has departed Electronic Arts, leaving behind the Canadian studio EA Motive she founded in 2015.

EA Motive will continue to operate, but will now do so under the leadership of Samantha Ryan. Ryan notably already heads up multiple studios for EA’s North American operations, including EA Mobile, BioWare, and Maxis.

According to a statement from EA's head of communications John Reseburg obtained by VentureBeat, Raymond’s departure seems to follow EA’s decision to bring Motive under Ryan’s control.

“EA Studios is focused on bringing more creative new games and content to players. Laura Miele and her team have taken several steps internally to better support our game makers in this pursuit, such as expanding Samantha Ryan’s portfolio to lead additional studios, including Motive,” said Reseburg.

“With this change, Jade Raymond has decided to leave Electronic Arts,” he added.”In her time with us, Jade helped to build great teams, and our projects underway at Motive and other studios continue unchanged. We’re appreciative of all of her efforts, and we wish Jade all the best as she moves on to her next adventure. We are driving greater creativity into everything we do across EA Studios, and we’ll look forward to sharing more in the months to come.”

Raymond herself was at the helm of the unnamed Star Wars project picked up from the now-shuttered Visceral Games studio. Before her time at EA, Raymond spent several years at Ubisoft and served as a producer on the original Assassin’s Creed, and later as executive producer on Assassin’s Creed II, Assassin’s Creed: Bloodlines, the original Watch Dogs game, and Splinter Cell: Blacklist.