Guerrilla Games' Angie Smets is leaving the studio in order to join PlayStation Studios. Smets, who joined Guerrilla in 2003 and has served as its studio director since 2019, will sign on with PlayStation Studios as its new head of development strategy.
In a message on the official Guerrilla Games website, the studio bids farewell to Smets, expressing gratitude for her leadership and wishing her the best in her new position. Smets herself says that working with Guerrilla has been "an absolute dream" and that her co-directors Jan-Bart van Beek and Michiel van der Leeuw have become "like brothers" to her.
The management team at Guerrilla now consists of three co-directors: Joel Eschler, Hella Schmidt, and Jan-Bart van Beek. Michiel van der Leeuw will be returning to the role of technical director alone, after serving as both technical director and studio director since 2019. He'll now focus on the studio's Decima engine and its future.
Despite this changeup in management personnel, Guerrilla says it's got "full confidence" in its new leadership. The studio is currently hard at work on "Aloy's next adventure", as well as its "exciting online project", the latter likely referring to the multiplayer Horizon game on which the studio is currently working. Hopefully, we'll get a better idea of where those projects are heading in the next couple of months.
In her role as head of development strategy, Smets will likely oversee PlayStation Studios' first-party development efforts, which include not only Guerrilla but also developers like Naughty Dog, Santa Monica Studio, and Housemarque, as well as Jade Raymond's Haven Studios. Again, we'll have to wait and see whether Smets' appointment prompts any kind of strategic change in the way PlayStation approaches its studios. Stay tuned for more news on this, as well as all other things Guerrilla and PlayStation-related.