Jade Raymond leaves Electronic Arts

Jade Raymond, who joined Electronic Arts in 2015 to form the EA Motive studio, has left the company. EA confirmed Raymond's departure in a statement indicating that she had been replaced at the head of Motive by senior vice president Samantha Ryan, who is also responsible for EA Mobile, Maxis, and BioWare. 

"[Chief Studios Officer] 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," EA said. "Samantha is known for driving creative design and supporting game teams so they can bring their visions to life. She is a deeply experienced game-maker with a gameography that spans from The Sims to Batman: Arkham City to No One Lives Forever to the highly-anticipated Anthem." 

"With this change, Jade Raymond has decided to leave Electronic Arts. 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." 

Raymond previously served as producer or managing director on high-profile Ubisoft games including Assassin's Creed, Splinter Cell: Blacklist, and Far Cry 4, and her move to EA was greatly hyped. Vice president Patrick Soderlund said a few months after her arrival that the company wanted to make "gigantic action games" like those Ubisoft is known for, and that was reportedly what she was up to, with both new properties and at least one Star Wars game being developed in partnership with Amy Hennig's Visceral Games. But EA closed Visceral in October 2017 and indicated earlier this year that it was having second thoughts about "story-based, linear" games in general.