Despite Assassin's Creed Codename Hexe reportedly being the game in Ubisoft's portfolio that "everyone at Ubisoft wants to work on," the upcoming project has gone through another major leadership change. After it lost its creative director, Clint Hocking earlier this year, Assassin's Creed Hexe has now lost game director Benoit Richer, who departs the company to go start his own.
Richer announced his departure on his LinkedIn page, calling it "the beginning of a new chapter" in his career, as he finally moves away from working at some of the biggest publishers in the industry to be a co-founder and game director at a brand new indie studio called Servo Games. Richer had spent nearly two decades at Ubisoft between two stints at the company, split up by a short stint at EA and a slightly longer six-year stint at WB Games Montreal.
When Hocking left, Ubisoft made it clear that Jean Guesdon, the head of content for the Assassin's Creed brand, would be taking over as creative director. We've reached out to Ubisoft to see if someone has taken Richer's place, but did not hear back in time for publication. We'll update this article if/when we hear anything more.
While Richer's departure is seemingly much more clear-cut than some of Ubisoft's previous veteran departures, it is nonetheless yet another veteran developer who had been with Ubisoft for several years on their way out of the company's doors. Longtime Assassin's Creed developer and former head of the franchise, Marc-Alexis Côté left the company (somewhat unwillingly) in October of last year.
The head of The Division franchise, Julian Gerighty, left Ubisoft to join EA and work on Battlefield earlier this year. A month later was Hocking's aforementioned departure, and now Richer. It's also worth noting that Richer is joining other former Ubisoft veterans at Servo Games, including art director Danny Marcoux, who was previously at Ubisoft for 24 years and a lead artist on Far Cry 2, and animation director Alex Drouin.
Four veteran developers leaving within six months since the establishment of Ubisoft's new subsidiary, Vantage Studios, which was followed by a "major reset" and company restructuring to start 2026, which also meant mass layoffs, means that Ubisoft has lost a lot of talent before the year is even half over.
While everyone is currently distracted and excited by Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced, the future of the franchise beyond potential remakes and the future of Ubisoft is still very much in question, and what's becoming a pattern of veteran departures, either willing or unwilling, doesn't bode well for Ubisoft.
It does bode well for players, though, since we have a very recent example of the good that can come out of a bunch of Ubisoft veterans leaving to form their own studio. It could just lead to the next game to receive more GOTY awards than Elden Ring. Who knows if that's what Servo Games will become, but Sandfall Interactive definitely proved it could be done.
About the author: David has been writing about videogames, technology, and culture since 2020, with a focus on reporting daily news across multiple publications, including GameDaily.Biz, GameSkinny, and PlayStation Universe before joining Wccftech in 2025. David started contributing as Canada/US reporter for Wccftech's gaming section in 2025. Besides being up-to-date on the industry's movements, he loves interviewing developers, reviewing games, and writing intricate essays about the symbolism and layered meanings to be found in rich narratives as he's done for publications like GamesIndustry.Biz, LostInCult, and others. Outside of games he loves movies, music, theatre, his hometown, and his family, though not necessarily in that order.
Follow Wccftech on Google to get more of our news coverage in your feeds.
