A few days before the 2019 Game Developers Conference, where Google had already confirmed its presence, news emerged of a hire that said a lot about its plans: Jade Raymond, one of the best-known producers in the industry, took on the role of vice president at the company. She broke the news herself on Twitter, in March 2019, saying she was excited to finally be able to share that she had joined Google as VP.
What stands out is the résumé. Raymond began as a programmer at Sony and was a producer on The Sims Online at Electronic Arts. In 2004 she joined Ubisoft Montreal, where she led the creation of the first Assassin’s Creed, and later was executive producer of Assassin’s Creed II and oversaw new brands such as Watch Dogs. In 2010, she moved to Toronto to found and run Ubisoft Toronto. In July 2015, she returned to EA to create Motive Studio, in Montreal, and oversee Visceral Games. She left EA in October 2018, speaking only of a top-secret project.
A detail that made perfect sense at the time: the hire reinforced rumors that Google was about to enter the games market for good, with something to be shown at GDC. Having someone with experience building studios from scratch was exactly what a company with no tradition in games would need.
What came next
The project was Stadia, the streaming game service revealed at GDC in March 2019. Raymond took charge of Stadia Games and Entertainment, the first-party studio division created to produce exclusives for the service. The experience was short: in February 2021, Google closed the division, and Raymond left the company. In March 2021, she founded Haven Studios, with investment from Sony, which bought the studio in July 2022; the in-house project is Fairgame$, a live-service multiplayer game centered on heists. In May 2025, it was announced that Raymond had left Haven. Stadia was shut down on 18 January 2023.
Source: Jade Raymond and Google, via Eurogamer.
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