The director of Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed Valhalla, Eric Baptizat, has joined Electronic Arts' Motive studio.

As reported by Axios and VGC, he has been hired by Motive as a game director on an unannounced project. Baptizat spent 16 years at Ubisoft in Montreal, first working as a lead game designer for 12 years ahead of a promotion of game director in 2018. Before that he worked at a2m and Infogrames.

He joins EA Motive amid rumours that the studio is working on a "reimagining" of sci-fi horror franchise Dead Space, which was originally developed by San Francisco's Visceral Games. That studio was closed down by EA in 2017 and the Star Wars game it was working on – Ragtag - was cancelled at the same time.

EA Motive was set up back in 2015 with Ubisoft vet Jade Raymond at the helm. She departed the studio in 2018 and moved to Google Stadia. Motive contributed to 2017's Star Wars Battlefront 2 – making that game's story portion – and was behind last year's Star Wars Squadrons.

Motive's GM Patrick Klaus says that the studio has "several" projects in the works.