Several Ex-Stadia Developers Join Jade Raymond's New Game Studio

Several former Google Stadia first-party developers have joined Haven Entertainment Studios, a new company founded by former Stadia studio head Jade Raymond. They include the former lead writer for the Assassin's Creed series, Corey May, who also worked at Ubisoft during Raymond's tenure.

May will be Haven Entertainment Studio's world and IP director, which appears to be a similar sort of position that he held at Ubisoft--he'll likely be responsible for the overarching narrative of the studio's projects.

In between Ubisoft and Google, Corey May worked in narrative design roles at both Certain Affinity and 2K Games. At Certain Affinity, he's included in the credits of Doom, but the company only worked on the competitive multiplayer.

He also co-wrote Batman: Arkham Origins. Because he was a narrative director at Stadia Games and Entertainment for only about eight months and internal development has been shut down, it doesn't appear we'll see the fruits of his labor during this time.

Stadia Games & Entertainment Montreal GM Sebastien Puel also joined the company as a co-founder, and staff UX researcher Jonathan Dankoff has joined as "insights director." Concept artists Erwann Le Rouzic and Francis Denoncourt joined, as well, as did software engineer Pierre-Marc Bérubé.

With Google already laying off many of its Stadia developers as the service moves to only offering third-party games, its head of product John Justice also left the company. However, it doesn't appear he joined Haven with the other departing employees.

One key Stadia figure who remains at Google is Phil Harrison. Joining the company in January 2018, Harrison also had roles at Microsoft during the early Xbox One era and was at PlayStation from 1992 until 2008.