Jade Raymond departs EA Motive

Senior VP of EA Motive Jade Raymond is departing the studio she founded and leaving EA entirely.

VentureBeat reports that Samantha Ryan will take over Raymond's former role as studio lead. Ryan already heads up EA's Mobile, Maxis, and BioWare studios in North America, and will continue to oversee these in addition to Motive, and will still report to head of global publishing Laure Miele.

Raymond founded EA Motive in 2015 after departing Ubisoft Toronto, with the initial goal of focusing on new IP in close collaboration with BioWare. Its first project, however, was to work with Visceral on Amy Hennig's canceled Star Wars game. Later, the studio contributed to Star Wars: Battlefront II.

In a statement, EA head of communications John Reseburg emphasized that EA Motive will continue to have a heavily creative focus.

"EA Studios is focused on bringing more creative new games and content to players," he said. "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."