Assassin's Creed, Far Cry Director's New Studio Sold To Google Stadia

Google Stadia, the nascent streaming service, is bulking up its game development pipeline. The company has announced it’s acquired Typhoon Studios, the independent game studio founded by Assassin’s Creed III and Far Cry 4 director Alex Hutchinson.

Google’s gaming executive Jade Raymond–who herself was instrumental in the creation of the Assassin’s Creed franchise–announced the acquisition on Google’s blog. “Typhoon Studios has built an incredible team of industry veterans who are committed to the player experience,” she said.

Typhoon will become part of the Stadia Games and Entertainment studio located in Montreal. Sebastien Puel, who also formerly worked at Ubisoft on the Assassin’s Creed series, heads up the Stadia team in Montreal. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

Typhoon is currently working on Journey to the Savage Planet for release on January 28, 2020, and Raymond said the team will continue development as they become part of the Stadia team. The game was already announced for PS4, Xbox One, and PC with 505 Games as the publisher.

Journey to the Savage Planet will go ahead as a multiplatform release, but Hutchinson said on Twitter that Typhoon will make Stadia-exclusive games in the future.

Typhoon’s other founder, Reid Schneider, also worked at Ubisoft from 1998-2002 before moving to Electronic Arts and later Warner Bros.

Google Stadia launched in November with one exclusive game, Gylt. In addition to additional exclusives from Typhoon, Google is making more exclusives from its own internal game development teams.