Valhalla's Director Returns to Run Assassin's Creed

"Eric needs no introduction in this universe," Assassin's Creed head of content Jean Guesdon wrote on LinkedIn. "16 years at Ubisoft, key contributions to Black Flag, Origins, and Valhalla as Game Director, his passion for gameplay craft and his deep connection to this franchise speak for themselves."

The man he's talking about is Eric Baptizat, who quietly re-entered Ubisoft's doors this week as the new game director for the entire Assassin's Creed brand. Baptizat originally spent 16 years at Ubisoft before leaving in 2021, during which time he served as lead game designer on Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag, senior game designer on Unity, project lead on game design for Origins, and game director on Valhalla. After departing, he joined EA's Motive Studio, where he directed the critically acclaimed Dead Space remake and served as a game design director on Battlefield 6.

I wrote about his Dead Space work just last week when reports first surfaced that he'd been hired to steer Assassin's Creed, so seeing the official confirmation land this fast is a good sign that Ubisoft isn't messing around with this appointment. Baptizat's resume across both franchises is one of the strongest in the AAA space right now, and bringing him back to the series he helped shape for over a decade sends a clear signal about where Ubisoft wants Assassin's Creed to go.

A very different Ubisoft

The company Baptizat is returning to looks nothing like the one he left five years ago. Ubisoft has since been split into Ubisoft and Vantage Studios following a partnership with Tencent, a restructuring born from a difficult stretch that saw the publisher's stock crater and several high-profile releases underperform. Assassin's Creed now falls under the Vantage Studios umbrella, and the leadership around the franchise has been rebuilt almost from scratch. Earlier this year, Guesdon himself was installed as head of content alongside two other franchise veterans, Martin Schelling and François De Billy.

Baptizat slots into this new structure at a moment of relative momentum. Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced, the remake of the very game he originally helped design, reportedly surpassed its annual sales goals in roughly 14 days. The next game on the horizon is Assassin's Creed Hexe, which remains largely a mystery beyond insider reports suggesting it's at least a year away.

I think this hire makes a lot of sense, but Push Square's coverage raised a point I keep coming back to: if you weren't a fan of Valhalla's bloated map and live-service roadmap, Baptizat's name at the top of the credits might not fill you with confidence. Valhalla sold extremely well, but it also drew years of criticism for being too long, too padded, and too reliant on drip-fed content updates. The question isn't whether Baptizat can make a big Assassin's Creed game. He's proven that multiple times over. It's whether the version of Assassin's Creed he wants to build in 2026 looks different from the one that burned players out in 2020.

Guesdon's LinkedIn post framed the return with warmth, calling it a homecoming. "Welcome back, Eric. We're so glad to have you home," he wrote. Ubisoft clearly wants fans to read this as a course correction, a signal that the franchise is back in the hands of people who built its best entries. Whether Baptizat gets the creative latitude to actually steer the ship, or whether he's been brought in to put a trusted face on a direction already locked in by Tencent-backed leadership, will only become clear once we see what Hexe actually looks like.