Assassin's Creed franchise boss Marc-Alexis Côté has departed Ubisoft after a career spanning more than 20 years, IGN understands.
The news comes just two weeks after Assassin's Creed, Ubisoft's biggest brand, became operated by Vantage Studios, the separate business entity formed by Ubisoft with a 25% stake from Chinese giant Tencent that will also now oversee all future Far Cry and Rainbow Six games.
Ubisoft staff were informed of the news this afternoon via an internal email which discussed the need for Vantage Studios' leadership team to be "aligned" with its core goals. IGN understands that Côté was offered a role as part of Vantage Studios' leadership, but declined.
In an internal note to Ubisoft staff obtained by IGN, Vantage Studios co-CEO Christophe Derennes said he was "disappointed" by Côté's decision, and that the former leader "had his own expectations and priorities related to Vantage Studios’ creation and future."
"Following the organizational restructuring announced in March 2025, Marc-Alexis Côté has chosen to pursue a new path elsewhere outside of Ubisoft," a Ubisoft spokesperson told IGN today. "While we are saddened to see him go, we’re confident that our talented teams will carry forward the strong foundation he helped build.
"We are deeply grateful for the impact Marc-Alexis has had over the years, particularly in shaping the Assassin’s Creed brand into what it is today. His leadership, creativity, and dedication have left a lasting mark on our teams and our players. We thank him sincerely for his many contributions and wish him continued success in all his future endeavors."
Côté, known to colleagues by his initials as "Mac", joined Ubisoft in 2005 as a software engineer, before working as a lead engine programmer on Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands. From there, he joined the Assassin's Creed series in time for Brotherhood, working as a lead level designer, before serving as a game director on Assassin's Creed 3.
As creative director, Côté led development on a string of projects built at Ubisoft Quebec, the talented team which made Assassin's Creed: Black Flag DLC Freedom Cry, Assassin's Creed Syndicate, and then Assassin's Creed Odyssey, for which he served as senior producer.
In March 2022, as Quebec worked on Assassin's Creed Shadows and Ubisoft sought to relaunch the series with a more consistent story focus via the Animus Hub (a project then envisioned under the title of Assassin's Creed Infinity), it was Côté that took the reigns on the entire franchise, laying out a Marvel-style slate of upcoming projects that included the forthcoming Assassin's Creed Hexe, which still lacks a release date.
And then last December, amid a firestorm of discourse surrounding Assassin's Creed Shadows' Black samurai protagonist Yasuke, it was Côté who defended the role of the series' storytelling during an impassioned BAFTA speech. Côté said the online backlash to the game had been "devastating" to his colleagues, and defended the game's high-profile delay as necessary to deliver on the high quality that fans' expected.
"Assassin's Creed has always been about exploring the full spectrum of human history, and by its very nature, that history is diverse. Staying true to history means embracing the richness of human perspectives – without compromise," Côté said last year.
Today's news comes just days after a report revealed that Ubisoft canceled an Assassin's Creed game set in the post-Civil War period that featured a former Black slave as its protagonist, who would have been shown fighting the Ku Klux Klan. The project had been in its initial stages when it was ditched in the summer of 2024 due to concerns surrounding the US political climate, though some early work had been undertaken at Ubisoft Quebec.
Tom Phillips is IGN's News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social