Today Ubisoft announces that Michel Ancel has chosen to leave the video game industry after an exceptional career spanning more than 30 years. A nature-lover, Michel has been working on a personal project dedicated to the protection of wildlife for a long time. This project, a wildlife sanctuary in the region of Montpellier, France, is now growing in scope, and he wishes to put his full effort into this longstanding passion.
Michel is at the origin of some of Ubisoft and the video game industry’s most beloved franchises, including Rayman, the Raving Rabbids and Beyond Good and Evil, whose second opus, Beyond Good and Evil 2 is currently in development. The teams at Ubisoft Montpellier are currently focusing on the main stages of production, aligned with the vision set out by Michel. They will have more to share with their community of fans in the months to come.
We would like to thank Michel for the incredible creative vision he has brought to Ubisoft over the course of his career, and wish him all the best for this new venture.
Michel Ancel is a French video game designer. He is best known for creating the Rayman franchise, for which he was the lead designer for the first two games, and Rayman Origins and its sequel Rayman Legends. He is also known for the cult hit video game Beyond Good & Evil and for King Kong, based on Peter Jackson’s film King Kong, which was critically acclaimed. In 2017 he began work on Beyond Good and Evil 2.