Ubisoft's executive revolving door has claimed another well-regarded name. Clint Hocking, the creative director behind Assassin's Creed Codename Hexe and a figure synonymous with some of the most creatively ambitious games of the past two decades, has departed the French publisher. The news, first reported by Video Games Chronicle, was communicated to staff during an internal meeting helmed by the Assassin's Creed franchise's newly-assembled leadership team.
Ubisoft confirmed the departure in a statement issued to multiple outlets.
"We sincerely thank him for his vision, creative contributions, and dedication over the years, and we wish him the very best in his next chapter. Development on Assassin's Creed Codename Hexe continues with a seasoned team."
Ubisoft's Vantage Studios announced just days earlier that Jean Guesdon had been appointed head of content for the entire Assassin's Creed brand. Guesdon will now also step into the creative director role on Hexe directly. He directed Assassin's Creed Origins and Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, two entries widely regarded as highlights of the franchise. His credentials are not in question. What is in question is whether picking up mid-development on a project shaped by someone else's creative vision will produce a coherent final product.
A Twenty-Year Career, Twice Over
Hocking departs the company after a cumulative 20 years working on Ubisoft games. He has had an on-again, off-again relationship with Ubisoft since 2001, starting work on Splinter Cell before becoming creative director on Chaos Theory and Far Cry 2, then leaving to work at LucasArts, Valve, and Amazon Game Studios, before returning to creatively direct Watch Dogs Legion. He then relocated from Ubisoft's Toronto office to Montreal to take charge of Hexe, announcing in 2022 that he was "working as the Creative Director on Assassin's Creed: Codename Hexe, with an amazing team in Montreal."
Hocking is also the person who coined the term "ludonarrative dissonance" to describe the friction between the story a game tells and the mechanics it asks you to play through. It is a phrase that has since become standard vocabulary in game criticism. That kind of intellectual influence on an industry is rare, and his departure leaves a noticeable gap.
What Is Hexe, and What Is at Stake?
Hexe takes place in the "latter stages of the Holy Roman Empire," involves witch trials, and would seemingly take on a much more survival horror-infused tone than other games in the series. The game is also expected to have a larger emphasis on horror elements alongside the other aspects the Assassin's Creed series is known for. As Bloomberg reported at the time of its announcement, the project was positioned as a genuinely different direction for the franchise. Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot himself said it "is going to be a very different game from Assassin's Creed Shadows."
That ambition is precisely what makes the leadership change worth scrutinising. A mid-development change of creative director is not unprecedented in the games industry, but it carries real risk, particularly on a title attempting something tonally unusual for its franchise. The circumstances of Hocking's exit have not been disclosed, and Ubisoft has given no indication of whether his creative vision for the project will be preserved or revised under Guesdon.
A Restructure With Real Costs
Hocking's departure is the latest in a series of senior exits that have defined Ubisoft's ongoing "major reset." Marc-Alexis Côté, Julian Gerighty, and now Clint Hocking are all senior creative leads who have directed successful projects for Ubisoft, all of whom the company has now lost in this reorganisation. In October 2025, former Assassin's Creed boss Marc-Alexis Côté left Ubisoft under a cloud, which a few months later resulted in a lawsuit against his former employers. Reports put the claim at £1 million. Since its restructuring was announced, Ubisoft has been facing considerable criticism from its employees, with union representatives calling for Guillemot's resignation.
The restructure has reorganised Ubisoft into five "creative houses." Vantage Studios has taken charge of the Assassin's Creed series. The franchise is now being handled by Vantage Studios, headed up by Ubisoft veteran Christophe Derennes and Yves Guillemot's son Charlie. That last detail has attracted scrutiny of its own, with the CEO defending the appointment by pointing to Ubisoft's origins as a family company.
There is a reasonable case to be made for what Ubisoft is attempting. Large creative organisations do become bloated, and consolidating decision-making around a smaller group of proven franchise veterans is not inherently irrational. Martin Schelling, Jean Guesdon, and François de Billy each have experience with various stages of the series' nearly 20-year history, with all three having worked on 2017's Assassin's Creed Origins. If the goal is coherence and accountability, a tighter leadership structure is at least a plausible way to get there.
The harder question is whether that coherence comes at the cost of the very creative risk-taking that made projects like Hexe interesting in the first place. Hocking was brought onto the project precisely because he thinks differently about games. Little is known about Hexe at this point, but it has been reported as a more supernatural-focused game than other entries in the series. That kind of tonal departure from a long-running franchise requires someone willing to defend an unusual vision against institutional pressure. Whether Guesdon, working simultaneously as head of content across the entire brand, can sustain that kind of singular focus on Hexe remains to be seen.
Ubisoft says the game will "deliver something distinctive within the Assassin's Creed franchise." That is a corporate assurance, and corporate assurances are worth exactly what they cost to produce. The real test comes when Hexe eventually shows itself to the public, probably not before 2027 by most estimates. By then, the question of whose vision is on screen will have a definitive answer.