Jade Raymond’s Haven Entertainment Studio opened the beginning of Assassin’s Creed. Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) has completed the acquisition of Haven, announcing that the developer has become part of the PlayStation Studios family.
SIE announced on its official SNS on the 11th that the contract to acquire Haven Entertainment Studio, founded by Jade Raymond, had been completed.
Jade Raymond, who was the producer of the first game in the Assassin’s Creed series, which is Ubisoft’s representative work, has since taken on the role of executive producer of the early major works of Assassin’s Creed, leading the series expansion. After leaving Ubisoft, where she worked for about 10 years, she worked for EA and Google Stadia before establishing Haven Entertainment Studio in Montreal, Canada in 2021.
SIE invested in the company to develop a new IP game for the PlayStation that was not disclosed at the time of the establishment of Haven Studio. About a year later, in March of this year, Herman Hulst, CEO of PlayStation Studio, congratulated Haven on becoming a family and officially announced the acquisition.
The acquisition of the studio, which had been established for one year, was of some opinion as a countermeasure against Xbox, which is expanding its territory by acquiring a large game company. However, some argue that Jade Raymond’s cloud innovation is the main reason for the acquisition. During the global pandemic, Haven Studios approached a unique way to build a cloud studio and wanted to expand the cloud’s role in the development process. This means that these development innovations caught the attention of SIE, an investor. In addition, veteran developers who joined Haven are also cited as reasons for the acquisition.
Meanwhile, Jade Raymond said at the time of the acquisition announcement that she was ‘back in place and able to create new IP’. Although Jade Raymond was also at EA before making her name at Ubisoft, her industry career began in 1998 as a software engineer at Sony Online Entertainment.
Haven Studio announced that it is currently focusing on game development as a social platform, and announced that the new game is a live service game.