Claude Guillemot, a founder of the renowned video game publisher Ubisoft, the maker of the Assassin’s Creed and Far Cry franchises, as well as other games, died in a plane crash on Friday in France. He was 69.
“Ubisoft was deeply saddened to learn of the death of Claude Guillemot, co-founder of the group and chairman of Guillemot Corp., in an accident,” a spokesperson for Ubisoft said in a statement on Saturday. “Our thoughts are with his family and loved ones during this difficult time.”
The spokesperson did not provide additional details about the crash or Guillemot’s death.
The French news network ICI reported that a Cessna 421, a twin-engine propeller plane with eight seats, crashed shortly before 6 p.m. on Friday in La Baule, a seaside resort town in western France. The two people on board were killed, the network said.
Mayor Franck Louvrier of La Baule told ICI that the plane was approaching the town’s airport when, according to witnesses, it “banked and crashed.”
The identity of the second passenger was not yet known.
Guillemot founded Ubisoft Entertainment with his four brothers in 1986. From its early releases like Zombi to the hit 1990s platformer Rayman, Ubisoft captured a broad swath of the video game market.
Since the company first released Assassin’s Creed, a historical action-adventure series that follows two warring secret societies, in 2007, the game has attracted 200 million players. In an iteration released in 2025, Assassin’s Creed Shadows, players try to save 16th-century Japan from malevolent actors.
A New York Times review of the game applauded its “stunningly realized depiction” of Japan, adding, “Shadows offers more, digging deeper to deliver a fascinating, grounded picture beyond the wild, natural world.”
But some people online criticized the game for having “gone woke” by creating a Black samurai named Yasuke. Elon Musk, the tech entrepreneur, said Shadows was an example of how “D.E.I. kills art,” using an abbreviation for diversity, equity and inclusion. Ubisoft reminded players that its games were works of fiction, even as Yasuke was an actual historical figure.
A film and television division at Ubisoft is at work on adaptations of the Assassin’s Creed and Far Cry series.
The Guillemot Corporation, separate from Ubisoft, manufactures gaming accessories and audio equipment.
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