Giselle Stewart to lead reformed studio; Permanent replacement sought
Gareth Edmondson has departed from Ubisoft Reflections as its studio manager after more than ten years at the company.
Edmondson “has made the choice to leave the studio”, Ubisoft has told Develop, though further details are not clear.
The last project with him at the helm was the critically acclaimed Driver: San Francisco.
Develop understands that Edmondson, who’s brother Martin founded Reflections in 1984, will remain in the games business in some capacity.
Giselle Stewart, formerly general manager, will now head the studio along with production director Darren Yeomans until a permanent replacement is found.
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“In the five years since Reflections has become a part of the Ubisoft team of studios, we have had the pleasure of working and creating together with Gareth Edmondson as head,” a spokesperson for Ubisoft said.
“Gareth has made the choice to leave the studio at this time. Our team of talented developers at Reflections will continue their work on upcoming projects under the supervision of Giselle Stewart, Studio Manager, and Darren Yeomans, Production Director, until a permanent replacement has been named."
The surprise resignation comes after brother Martin returned to the studio for the development of Driver: San Francisco, which exceeded sales expectations and garnered an average rating of 80 on Metacritic.
Last year it was rumoured the studio was to cut 19 staff as part of wider restructuring at Ubisoft, whilst in 2004 studio manager Martin quit the developer and sued then owners Atari for unfair dismissal, paving the way for brother Gareth to take over the role.
It wasn't a rumour that redundancies happened, they happened..and why giselle? She's a glorified hr bod
Ubisoft is great to keep their redundancies out of the press. It's simple, instead of making massive cuts, you just keep the tap open for people to constantly trickle down. One or two per week, and suddenly you cut 50-100 people over a year.
A "rumour" of 19 people is a joke, there's way more, and they all happened!
What's more, the game, like just about every big Ubisoft project these days, was in development hell for YEARS, constantly going in circles, and burning through crazy amounts of money. On top of that it sold poorly! We're talking tens of millions of dollars in losses. But I'm sure Gareth is just taking the fall for higher ups.
That studio is a shambles anyways. I'ev heard from first hand that the maanagement are trully useless, a creative director who got demoted to lead designer then sacked, an art director who didn't art direct but spent more time with game design and drawing super heroes apparently and is now working on the studio 'help desk'. Loads of dead wood too, their long timers just dont keep up with the current industry and cos of that they have very poor tech and very poor artists. Apparently their longest serving artists had to do a next gen art test before helping out other ubisoft projects! And Gareth Edmunson like his brother Martin and Giselle are trully awful people who dont give a shit about their staff. Its mind boggling such a studio has survived for so long. I think Ubisoft are now realising the mistake it was to buy Reflections.
