Stadia Loses Part of Key Staff to Jade Raymond's Team
Google has parted ways with more employees overseeing Google Stadia. John Justice, vice president and head of product, has left the company's ranks, and a number of others have joined Haven Studios, founded by Jade Raymond.
In recent months, there have been successive reports about the liquidation of some of internal studios by Google and the alleged cessation of work on many projects created for Google Stadia. This did not bode well for the future of this once-awaited service. The same can be said about recent reports, as apparently many important people associated with Google Stadia have left the company's ranks. Some of them have joined Jade Raymond (who parted ways with the company some time ago) at Haven, the studio she founded, as evidenced by their profiles on LinkedIn (via ResetEra).
The departure of Corey May (widely credited as one of the creators of the Assassin's Creed series, along with Jade Raymond and Patrice Désilets), Sebastien Puel, Jonathan Dankoff, Erwann Le Rouzic, and Pierre-Marc Bérubé, among others, has been confirmed. All have held important positions on the Google Stadia team, from graphics programmer (Pierre-Marc Bérubé) to head of creative and publishing services (Corey May) to general manager (Sebastien Puel). Moreover, from another source we learned about another significant departure. According to The Information, John Justice, vice president and head of product at Stadia, has also parted ways with Google. The company confirmed this information in a message to for 9to5Google.
To be fair, this is not the only "news" regarding Stadia. Last week it finally got a built-in game search engine. Recent months have also brought the debut of more productions in the service's catalogue (including Outriders, Resident Evil VII: Biohazard and Disco Elysium), and Resident Evil Village will soon join them. However, the departure of many important staff from the Stadia team may raise concerns about the future of the platform. Especially since Google is known for killing off projects that didn't live up to expectations.
