Splinter Cell Creative Director Returns to Ubisoft from Epic Games

Jumping from job to job isn’t unusual in any industry these days, but it’s especially prevalent in the video game industry, where employees are expected to hop from studio to studio between games, oftentimes before the games are even done, in order to ensure they’re getting competitive pay, a wide birth of experience, and more opportunities to work on the games they like. This is true on the executive level as well, but even still, Maxime Béland’s situation is… unusual.

See, Maxime Béland was a long-time Ubisoft employee who was Creative Director for on games like Far Cry 4 and 5, and games in the Splinter Cell series, specifically Conviction and Blacklist. In March of 2019, he left Ubisoft to join Epic Games as Creative Director, but now, just eight months later, it’s been revealed that he’s back at Ubisoft, now working as vice president of Ubisoft’s recently revamped editorial team. He wasn’t even at Epic Games (which, if I need to remind you, is kind of a big deal right now) for a full year before he hopped back to the studio he originally left to join them.

As for why he’s doing this? Evidence points to the aforementioned revamping of Ubisoft’s editorial team, which Ubisoft is doing in response to the fact that people are getting a little sick of how all Ubisoft games look and play exactly the same way, as evidenced by the recent high-profile failure of Breakpoint and The Division 2. His experience with the linear and story-driven Splinter Cell series may indicate that he’ll be in charge of reviving that particular franchise, and giving it a more distinct flavor than “open world with random missions to do,” which is the typical Ubisoft dish.

Still, that’s just a guess at this point. Maybe he just really missed the Ubisoft cafeteria.