Influential Eve Online producer will leave the company in June

Andie Nordgren‏, executive producer of the massively multiplayer spacefaring game Eve Online, has announced her departure from CCP Games. The move will be effective in June.

In a post shared with the community today, she said that CEO Hilmar Veigar Pétursson would be managing the transition.

“Due to family reasons,” Nordgren wrote in her post, “I’m leaving Iceland and CCP to move to my birth country of Sweden, where I’m looking forward to raising my children closer to the rest of my family. I wish I could be in two places at the same time — I am deeply passionate about Eve and the future of the game, and it’s with a heavy heart that I leave CCP, Eve Online and Iceland.”

Nordgren worked on Eve Online for eight of that game’s nearly 15 years online. Early on, she played an instrumental role in connecting the MMO to the ill-fated first-person shooter Dust 514. Later, she took on technical and production roles in the MMO, helping to create many of the game’s expansions. She was then named executive producer in 2014. Most recently, it was Nordgren, better known as CCP Seagull to the game’s community, who announced Eve’s move to a free-to-play model.

Nordgren won’t be leaving the games industry entirely. According to a message on her personal Twitter account, she will be taking a position with game engine developer Unity in Copenhagen, Denmark. We’ve reached out for more details.

Nordgren recently helped present an elaborate roadmap for the game at the annual Eve Fanfest, held each year near CCP’s headquarters in Iceland. In her goodbye post, she reassured fans that the plans to improve the MMO “belong to the whole team behind Eve Online — the many amazingly talented people working relentlessly behind the scenes [who] also have the full support of [CCP’s CEO, Pétursson].”

Eve Online turns 15 years old this May.