Per a recent news announcement from Google, the company will shut down internal game productions for Stadia titles slated after a 2021 window, closing the studios associated with them. All this is part of an effort to make big changes within Google, but it does mean Google is losing Jade Raymond, a key figure in Google's Stadia efforts.
Google is offering Stadia tech to game publishers directly, and the Stadia Pro gaming platform will still be offered to the public. However, this means that both of Google's game studios in Montreal and in Los Angeles will have to shut down, affecting around 150 jobs in total. One of the people being the seasoned gaming producer Jade Raymond, the head of game creation at Stadia.
Jade Raymond is a Canadian gaming producer who got some of her first experience working for big-name companies such as Electronic Arts and Ubisoft Montreal. At Ubisoft, Raymond was in charge of the creation of the first Assassin's Creed game, which allowed her to land an executive producer role for Assassin's Creed 2. In 2019, Jade Raymond joined Google's board as a vice president, where it was announced that she would be leading "Stadia Games and Entertainment" to create exclusive content for Google Stadia.
According to a source within the company, Google said that it will still try to help all of these developers find other related jobs within Google. However, it wasn't officially made public by any Google company board members if this was true or not. And if there is any indication, Jade Raymond herself has officially decided to take leave from the company instead of staying in order to pursue other future career possibilities.
Google has stated that it will still continue to operate the Stadia gaming service and the Google Stadia Pro Service. However, it is still not clear if the Stadia games that Raymond worked on that were close will still make their way to consumers. Stadia will nevertheless continue to bring in new third party games to the console, but some fans might see this as a step down from the "console competitor" that Google initially claimed Stadia would be.
Jade Raymond has not made any public announcements yet about what her future plans are. But for someone with an accomplished track record such as herself, it will not be hard for her to find something. Hopefully, the COVID pandemic won't prove to be too much of an obstacle, and it will be something fulfilling that Raymond will enjoy doing.
Source: Google