Motive Studio Founder Jade Raymond Leaves EA

By Brian Crecente

LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) – Jade Raymond, who joined Electronic Arts in 2015 where she founded Montreal-based Motive Studios, has left the company, Electronic Arts tells Variety.

Samantha Ryan, senior vice president of mobile, Maxis and Bioware, will now also oversee Motive Studios.

“ Studios is focused on bringing more creative new games and content to players,” according to the statement sent to Variety. “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.  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.  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, who was a group general manager and senior vice president of Motive Studios, Pop Cap Vancouver and lead development on Star Wars at EA, joined the company shortly after departing Ubisoft.

Raymond got her start in the game industry as a programmer for Sony. She went on to work at Electronic Arts, then as a correspondent for The Electric Playground, and finally Ubisoft Montreal, where she was the producer of “Assassin’s Creed.” She went on to serve as the executive producer of “Assassin’s Creed 2,” “Watch Dogs” and “Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Blacklist.” She helped open the Ubisoft Toronto Studio and served as its managing director, helping to expand the studio.