Eidos President and CEO Ian Livingstone departs after 20 years

Ian Livingstone, president and CEO of U.K. studio Eidos Interactive, is departing the company today after more than 20 years of service, parent company Square Enix announced in a post on the company blog.

Livingstone decided "the time [had] come" to depart the company in order to spend more time on other projects outside of Square Enix.

In 1995, Livingstone helped oversee the creation of Eidos plc and served as Executive Chairman until 2002 and life president until his announced departure today. During his time at Eidos, Livingstone helped launch a number of Square Enix's major franchises, including Deux Ex, Hitman, Thief, Legacy of Kain and Tomb Raider.

Prior to working with Eidos, Livingstone co-founded Games Workshop in 1975 and assisted with the launch of Dungeons & Dragons in Europe. He co-wrote the first game book for roleplaying game Fighting Fantasy in 1982, and designed Domark's text adventure Eureka in 1984.

Moving forward, Livingstone will focus on his work with the Livingstone Foundation, which assists the U.K. government with the opening of Free Schools and Academies "based on the ethos of creativity, collaboration, coding, problem-based learning and using games as a learning tool." Livingstone will also continue his Next Gen Skills campaign, a program for bringing computer programming classes into school systems. The campaign has already successfully convinced The Secretary of State for Education in the U.K. to add Computing to the national curriculum next year.

Livingstone also currently holds positions of Trustee of GamesAid, Chair of Playdemic, Chair of PlayMob, Vice Chair of UKIE, Chair of Skillset's Video Games Council, Chair of the Next Gen Skills Committee, and is a memeber of the Creative Industries Council as well as an advisor to the British Council.

According to the post, Livingstone will continue to be active within the video game industry in advising and entrepreneurial roles, the latter focused on social and mobile games.

"We're not saying a full goodbye as we're hopeful we will get to work with Ian on some future projects," reads the post. "But all of us at Square Enix do want to take this opportunity to publicly thank Ian for his unparalleled tenure and contribution to this business and the UK games industry. And we wish him every success with his future projects and new ventures."