PlayStation has announced on Twitter that its purchase of Jade Raymond’s Haven Studios has been finalized, which was initially announced earlier in March.
The Canadian Studio was founded by industry veteran, Jade Raymond who is more well known at Ubisoft for kicking off the Assassin’s Creed and Watch Dogs franchises as well as the founder of Dead Space Remake developer, Motive Studio. Following Raymond’s departure as the head of Stadia Games and Entertainment, she alongside other former Stadia employees formed Haven Studios and announced that the team would be working on an original IP for PlayStation which has been confirmed as a AAA Multiplayer title.
It's official! The agreement to acquire Haven has closed. Welcome to the PlayStation Studios family, @HavenStudiosInc! pic.twitter.com/rLFjsRYWdy
— PlayStation (@PlayStation) July 11, 2022
As a part of the finalized deal news, Raymond has given an update on the studio in an interview with GamesIndustry.biz. Not too much was revealed but Raymond says the studio’s team grew to over 100 employees, which is doubled compared to October which at the time was around 50 employees. Alongside that Raymond says that it’s investing heavily in R&D and “long-term cloud innovation, because we really believe it’s going to be a game-changer in terms of how games are made”.
To show how much they’re investing into the company’s future, Haven Studios has 21 engineers attached to the developer’s cloud innovation initiative. As well the official PlayStation Studio has hired former Rainbow Six: Siege technical architect, Jalal El Mansouri as Haven Studios’ principle architect and head of R&D, Raymond says Mansouri’s inclusion in the team will “a lot of bold ideas that we’re looking forward to exploring.” One of the motivations behind investing in R&D is PS5 architect, Mark Cerny who Raymond says “is kind of like a rockstar” and looks forward to the possibility of collaborating with.
“In this very senior engineering team, it’s not just tied to the cloud but also some more forward-thinking R&D. I’m not able to say too much now, but that’s obviously one of the other things that’s been a big attractor and is exciting to our team with PlayStation,” Raymond said in an interview with GamesIndustry.biz.
