Assassin's Creed Valhalla game director, Eric Baptizat, has left Ubisoft to join EA Motive.

The seasoned director - who helped reboot the Assassin's Creed series as lead designer on Origins and director on Valhalla - had been with the French developer/publisher for 16 years, but left earlier this year to join Motive on an unannounced project.

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Axios says "neither EA nor Baptizat are commenting on the move" (thanks, VGC), but we've reached out and will confirm as/when we hear back from either party.

It's a timely defection, as rumour has it Star Wars Squadrons developer EA Motive is working on the revival of an established, fan-favourite IP, thought by many to be a reimagining of celebrated horror sci-fi series, Dead Space. According to recent reports, EA plans to announce the project at its upcoming EA Play event in just a few weeks' time.

As Tom explained at the time, EA's Dead Space franchise has been mothballed since 2013, when Dead Space 3 launched to a lukewarm reception. Its addition of co-op, which completely changed the way the creepy sci-fi survival horror series played, was blamed on EA by fans at the time. Early ideas for a Dead Space 4 were subsequently shelved, and the series put on indefinite hiatus.