Assassin’s Creed creator launches new studio, Panache Digital Games

By Brenna Hillier

Assassin’s Creed creator Patrice Désilets has founded a new independent development studio.

Panache Digital games is based in Montreal, but apart from that we know very little about it.

Désilets announced the new team on Twitter, linking to a bare-bones website with a newsletter sign up, a moose theme and not much else.

My new studio in Montréal: http://t.co/7im0woEBOe Talk to you soon! #playwithpanache

— Patrice Desilets (@PatriceDez) November 12, 2014

It’s exciting to see Désilets back in the saddle as he’s had a rough old time of it the last few years. He left Ubisoft to lead THQ Montreal, and had to contend with Ubisoft’s non-competitive clauses. He built a new game called 1666, but when THQ went belly-up, Ubisoft bought the property and studio wholesale, made a lot of happy noises, and promptly shut the whole thing down. Probably quite sensibly, from a business standpoint.

Désilets is still suing to try and regain the rights, as far as we know, but we’re decreasingly optimistic about that. On the other hand, whatever it is he has been working on should be on show soon.

Désilets won fame and accord for his key creative role in the original Assassin’s Creed and followup Assassin’s Creed 2. He was not involved in the following sequels, and doesn’t think too much of them.

Thanks, GameInformer.