Ubisoft has appointed Christoph Hartmann, co-founder of 2K Games and a veteran publisher who helped launch the early Grand Theft Auto titles, as managing director of its newly formed Creative House 2. This studio group is dedicated exclusively to competitive and cooperative shooters and the company’s extensive Tom Clancy portfolio, including The Division, Ghost Recon, and Splinter Cell, with Rainbow Six remaining under a separate creative unit. The move is a key piece of Ubisoft’s broader internal restructuring into five specialized creative houses, a strategic shift designed to sharpen focus and give each brand team deeper autonomy and clearer commercial direction.
Who Is Christoph Hartmann and What Does His Appointment Mean for Ubisoft?
Christoph Hartmann takes the helm of Creative House 2 after most recently serving as vice president at Amazon Games. His career spans more than two decades, beginning at BMG Interactive, where he was directly involved in the publication of the earliest Grand Theft Auto titles, including Grand Theft Auto III and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. When Take-Two Interactive acquired BMG Interactive, Hartmann moved into a vice president of publishing role, and subsequently co-founded 2K Games after Take-Two purchased Visual Concepts. As president of 2K Games, he oversaw the launch and stewardship of some of the most commercially and critically successful franchises in modern gaming: BioShock, Borderlands, XCOM, Civilization, and Mafia. His record in building enduring, multi-entry sagas from the ground up is precisely the experience Ubisoft believes it needs for its Tom Clancy and shooter properties.
Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot described Hartmann as someone who has repeatedly demonstrated the ability to “get the best out of creative teams” and to “create lasting sagas.” Guillemot added that Hartmann’s experience across both development and publishing, combined with his management style, gives him a unique understanding of what it takes to build great video games. “I am convinced that Christophe will take our teams and brands to new heights and deepen their connection with the most loyal players who love these sagas,” Guillemot said.
Ubisoft’s Restructuring: Five Creative Houses and the Role of Creative House 2
The hiring of Hartmann cannot be understood in isolation. It is a direct consequence of Ubisoft’s decision to reorganize its entire development operation into five distinct creative houses, a process that has been underway for months. The most visible and heavily capitalized of these is Vantage Studios, which counts Chinese tech giant Tencent as a strategic investor. Vantage Studios controls Ubisoft’s biggest mainstream brands: Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry, and Rainbow Six. The remaining four houses are structured around other core genres and audiences, with Creative House 2 specifically chartered to deliver what Ubisoft describes as “demanding, competitive, and cooperative gameplay experiences centered on the battlefield.”
This means Creative House 2 is the dedicated home for first-person and third-person shooters, tactical military games, and competitive multiplayer titles. Its brand lineup draws almost entirely from the Tom Clancy universe, with The Division, Ghost Recon, and Splinter Cell as its flagship properties. Notably, Rainbow Six remains outside Hartmann’s purview, housed instead within Vantage Studios alongside the company’s biggest open-world franchises. The division reflects a deliberate strategic choice: Rainbow Six Siege operates as a live-service esports juggernaut with a distinct competitive ecosystem, while the other Tom Clancy brands lean more heavily into narrative-driven campaigns, cooperative PvE loops, and tactical sandbox design.
March of Giants and the Amazon Connection
Creative House 2 also includes a wild card: March of Giants, a multiplayer MOBA that Ubisoft acquired from Amazon in December. The title, still in development, adds a competitive, arena-based element to the house’s portfolio, sitting alongside the more tactical shooter experiences. Hartmann’s previous role at Amazon Games makes him intimately familiar with the property and the team behind it, smoothing the integration of an externally acquired project into Ubisoft’s internal structure.
A Veteran Publisher’s Journey: From BMG Interactive to 2K Games to Amazon
What exactly does Hartmann bring to Ubisoft beyond a recognizable name? His career arc is instructive. At BMG Interactive, he was present at the creation of the modern open-world action genre, helping bring Grand Theft Auto to a global audience at a time when the series was still finding its identity. When Take-Two absorbed BMG, Hartmann transitioned into a senior publishing role, learning the intricacies of global release management, marketing, and franchise planning. His decision to co-found 2K Games in 2005, alongside the acquisition of Visual Concepts, was a bet on the sports and licensed game market that paid off handsomely, but his leadership extended far beyond NBA 2K. Under his tenure, 2K Games published the first BioShock, a game that redefined narrative-first immersive sims; Borderlands, which invented the looter-shooter genre; XCOM: Enemy Unknown, which revived turn-based tactical strategy for a modern audience; and Civilization V and VI, which deepened the reach of grand strategy. That combination of genre diversity and commercial longevity is rare, and it directly aligns with Ubisoft’s stated goal of building sagas that endure across console generations.
After leaving 2K Games, Hartmann moved to Amazon Games, where he oversaw a studio group attempting to break into the AAA games market. Though Amazon’s gaming division has faced well-documented challenges—including cancellations and restructuring—Hartmann gained experience managing large-scale development across multiple geographies, navigating the intersection of cloud infrastructure and game design, and handling externally acquired intellectual property. That background is directly relevant to his new role at Ubisoft, where he will manage a distributed network of studios.
Which Studios Fall Under Creative House 2?
Hartmann will lead a collection of development teams that spans several countries and includes some of Ubisoft’s most accomplished studios. The full list of studios within Creative House 2 includes Massive Entertainment, Ubisoft Montreal, Ubisoft Paris, Ubisoft Toronto, and the dedicated team working on March of Giants.
Massive Entertainment, based in Malmö, Sweden, is currently finishing Star Wars Outlaws, an open-world Star Wars title that represents one of Ubisoft’s most ambitious releases of the year. Massive is also the original creator of The Division franchise, making it the natural lead studio for that series within Creative House 2. Ubisoft Montreal, one of the company’s largest and most storied studios, contributes Watch Dogs and For Honor to the house’s portfolio. While Watch Dogs is not a traditional military shooter, its open-world hacking and combat systems fit the house’s broader mandate of demanding, competitive gameplay. Ubisoft Paris handles the Ghost Recon series, and Ubisoft Toronto is the custodian of Splinter Cell, a franchise that has been dormant for years but remains one of Ubisoft’s most requested returns. The inclusion of Splinter Cell within Creative House 2 is particularly notable, as it strongly signals that Ubisoft intends to revive the stealth-action series under Hartmann’s leadership.
What Is the Strategic Rationale Behind the Creative House Structure?
Ubisoft’s reorganization into five creative houses is, at its core, an attempt to solve a structural problem that has plagued large, diversified game publishers for years: how to maintain creative identity and operational speed while managing hundreds of developers across dozens of brands. In the previous model, Ubisoft’s central production and editorial teams had to divide attention across an increasingly sprawling catalog, leading to franchise fatigue, delayed releases, and a perceived lack of innovation in annualized series. By creating dedicated houses with distinct brand charters, Ubisoft hopes each unit can develop its own culture, production rhythms, and audience relationship strategies.
For Creative House 2, that means a relentless focus on the shooter and tactical action audience. Guillemot stated explicitly that the new structure is designed to give teams “the structure, support, and vision to go further, to create the intense and unforgettable experiences that remind players why they fell in love with video games in the first place.” The implication is clear: Ubisoft believes that its Tom Clancy and shooter brands have not been reaching their full potential under the previous centralized model, and that a dedicated house with a specialized leader can extract more value, more innovation, and more player engagement from them.
What Does This Mean for the Future of Splinter Cell, The Division, and Ghost Recon?
The formation of Creative House 2 under Hartmann creates a clearer roadmap for each of these franchises. The Division is already an established live-service property with a dedicated player base, and Massive Entertainment continues to support it with seasonal content and expansions. The franchise’s future likely involves deeper integration of cooperative endgame systems and potentially a new mainline entry built on Ubisoft’s Snowdrop engine. Ghost Recon, which saw mixed reception with Breakpoint, may receive a strategic reboot aimed at returning to the tactical authenticity that defined earlier entries. Splinter Cell remains the biggest question mark. The series has not seen a new mainline release since 2013’s Splinter Cell: Blacklist, and fan demand for a return has grown louder with each passing year. Hartmann’s track record of reviving and modernizing established franchises—as he did with XCOM at 2K Games—suggests that Ubisoft Toronto may finally be given the resources and green light to develop a proper new Splinter Cell title. The inclusion of the brand within Creative House 2, rather than in Vantage Studios alongside Rainbow Six, indicates that Ubisoft sees Splinter Cell as a cooperative stealth experience rather than a competitive esports property, which aligns with the house’s mandate.
The competitive shooter landscape is more crowded than ever, dominated by long-running live-service giants like Call of Duty: Warzone, Valorant, Counter-Strike, and Overwatch 2. Ubisoft already competes in this space with Rainbow Six Siege, but that title remains in Vantage Studios. Creative House 2’s shooter portfolio leans more toward cooperative and tactical experiences, which is a differentiation strategy. Games like The Division and Ghost Recon offer PvE-focused loops that coexist with competitive modes, rather than diving head-first into the battle royale or hero shooter arms race. Hartmann’s experience launching Borderlands, a cooperative looter-shooter that built a massive audience without direct competitive PvP, may inform how Ubisoft positions its upcoming projects.
Ubisoft’s decision to bring in an external executive with Hartmann’s pedigree, rather than promoting from within, is also a signal. It suggests that the company recognizes the need for fresh perspective in its shooter divisions, particularly after a period of mixed commercial performance and internal turmoil. Hartmann’s mandate is not simply to maintain the status quo but to reinvigorate these brands and restore their standing among core players. His success at 2K Games was built on identifying underserved genres and investing heavily in quality, which is precisely the formula Ubisoft hopes he can replicate for Tom Clancy and its competitive shooter lineup.
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