Assassin’s Creed franchise boss Marc-Alexis Cote has recently left Ubisoft after working for the company for around two decades. The news comes on the heels of the control over the Assassin’s Creed franchise being given to Vantage Studios, a new company formed by Ubisoft with a 25% stake from Tencent.
Cote started working at Ubisoft in 2005 as a software engineer and joined the Assassin’s Creed team for the first time as a lead level designer for Brotherhood. Cote became a game director on Assassin’s Creed 3, reprising the same role in some of the best Assassin’s Creed games such as Black Flag. In 2022, while working on Assassin’s Creed Shadows, the executive took the reins of the entire franchise and was responsible for laying out the current plans for the series’ future.
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Assassin's Creed Boss Marc-Alexis Cote Leaves Ubisoft After Over 20 Years
This week, Cote has departed Ubisoft, as employees were informed via an email. According to IGN, Cote was offered a role as part of Vantage Studios’ leadership, but he refused it, which led Vantage Studios co-CEO Christophe Derennes to say he was “disappointed” by the turn of events. Every indication is that Ubisoft wanted the executive to remain in some leadership capacity, but it seems that Cote had some kind of disagreement regarding the creation of Vantage Studios and the future of Assassin's Creed.
It’s currently unknown how much Cote's decision to leave the team will impact future Assassin’s Creed games. It’s very likely that the "Valley of Memory" DLC for Assassin's Creed Mirage won’t be affected at all by these changes, as it will be released on November 18. The free DLC will take the game’s protagonist, Basim, and the supporting character Dervis to the ancient site of AlUla, located in modern-day Saudi Arabia. The free DLC was criticized soon after being unveiled due to its ties with the Saudi Arabian government, but Ubisoft claims to have full creative control over the story.
A game that could potentially be more affected by any change in the franchise’s direction would be the upcoming Assassin’s Creed Hexe. Not much is currently known about Assassin’s Creed Hexe, including the game’s release date, but it’s speculated that the story will be set in Central Europe during the 16th-century Holy Roman Empire, a period marked by witch hunts. Leaks have indicated that Assassin's Creed Hexe will revolve around a revenge plot, as the protagonist’s mother will be killed, but it’s always important to take rumors with a grain of salt before any official announcements are made.
Assassin's Creed Shadows
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OpenCritic Reviews
- Top Critic Avg: 81 /100 Critics Rec: 82%
- Released
- March 20, 2025
- ESRB
- Mature 17+ // Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Language
- Developer(s)
- Ubisoft Quebec
- Publisher(s)
- Ubisoft
WHERE TO PLAY
Source: IGN