Amazon Inc has been trying to poach top gaming talent from other developers for its own Amazon Game Studios for some time now, but the online retail giant seems to be having trouble holding on to some of them. News broke last week that three high level game design staff had simultaneously left the company, including former Far Cry 2 director Clint Hocking, and now it appears that Hocking has found his way back to Ubisoft Entertainment SA, where he had previously worked for over 10 years.

After making the decision to leave Amazon and return to his native Canada, Hocking said that he had several opportunities, and after some consideration he decided to return to Ubisoft.

“From the moment I set foot in the door here, it was like a reunion,” Hocking wrote in a blog post announcing his return to Ubisoft. “I couldn’t walk ten meters without seeing a familiar face, if not a close friend. But it was more than just familiar faces. It almost felt genetic. Interviewing with people I had never even met and getting drawn into discussions about process and design… it made me realize how much my own design and development thinking had been shaped by the culture here, and perhaps – just maybe – how even some tiny fragment of my own thinking had managed to work its way into Ubisoft’s approach as well.”

Hocking did not go into much detail about why he left Amazon, other than his disappointment with not having shipped a game in seven years and his frustration with being unable to obtain a greencard.

While Hocking is returning to Ubisoft, he will be working within an entirely different division of the company. He had previously worked with Ubisoft Montreal, the flagship studio that worked on the bulk of Ubisoft’s most popular games, including most of the Assassin’s Creed franchise. Now, however, Hocking will be working with Ubisoft Toronto, a satellite office founded in 2009 that up to now has primarily played a supporting role in developing Ubisoft’s games.

That may be changing soon, as information recently surfaced that Ubisoft Toronto was hiring new staff to work on “what’s next in AAA games,” so it looks like Hocking might be coming back just in time.

Image credit: Ubisoft