Daily Briefing: Monday 29th March

Assassin's Creed narrative director to depart Ubisoft

Longtime story lead Darby McDevitt has announced his departure from Ubisoft after more than a decade with the studio. His most recent role was as narrative director for Assassin's Creed Valhalla, but he has also penned stories for Revelations, Black Flag, Unity, and Origins. It's unclear what McDevitt's next project is, his Twitter announcement just says that he's off on "a new adventure."

• McDevitt's long history with the Assassin's Creed franchise is actually even longer than it looks. It actually began with Foundation 9 Entertainment and McDevitt writing stories for the Bloodlines and Discovery spin-offs, before jumping across to Ubisoft proper to work on Revelations. Between McDevitt and Corey May a few years back, Assassin's Creed has now lost a lot of writing experience, though, so it'll be interesting to see the next wave of talent coming through.

Nexon invest nearly $900m across Bandai Namco, Konami, Sega, and Hasbro

The online gaming outfit has detailed four separate investments totalling $874m, apparently as part of a wider board-approved plan to pour $1.5bn into entertainment companies that "demonstrate the ability to develop and sustain strong, globally recognised intellectual property."

• Nexon has emphasised that these are simply "long-term friendly investments" that carry "no intention of acquisition or activism." Nexon President and CEO, Owen Mahoney, outlined that Nexon believe that companies with strong global IP are "often overlooked and undervalued" in a new IP-focused market. So there you go.

Anthem reboot director exits BioWare

Jonathan Warner made the announcement via Twitter, stating that BioWare had been "home to [his] grateful hear for nearly ten years" but that he was "moving on to do new things", though Warner didn't elaborate on what those new things might be. His exit comes just a few weeks after development was ceased on Anthem's attempted reboot.

• EA made the decision to finally put the Anthem 2.0 team out of their misery and announced that development resources would be redirected to the next Dragon Age and Mass Effect games. Warner addressed these titles, and Star Wars: The Old Republic, in his farewell tweet, stating that they are all "in good hands."

It Takes Two has cracked the Steam best-sellers list...along with Subverse

Hazelight's new co-op puzzler released last week and appears to have gone over very well with players and critics alike. It's the best-reviewed game of 2021 so far according to Metacritic and, at time of writing, it's sitting pretty at No. 7 in the Steam best-selling Top 10. Also, thanks to the game's Friend's Pass, you can play with a friend even if they don't own the full game.

• There was some generally decent movement in the Steam Top 10 this past week, actually. Subverse, a highly NSFW space title debuted at No. 2, while Outriders leapfrogged GTA V into fifth place. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is back in the charts at No. 9 thanks to its GOTY edition being 80% off, but Valheim is still reigning supreme at No. 1.