Motive focuses on action-adventure games and creating new intellectual properties.

[2][3] Motive Studio was founded within Electronic Arts (EA) by Jade Raymond, a former Ubisoft executive and producer, at the helm.

[4] Kim Swift was hired as Motive's design director in January 2017.

[5] The Montreal studio of BioWare, another EA developer, was merged into Motive in August 2017.

According to Bloomberg News, while part of Motive was working on Star Wars Battlefront II, the other portion was working on Gaia; once Battlefront II had shipped, its team was absorbed into the Gaia team by 2018 and caused some cultural clashes within the studio, causing some of the studio executives to leave, followed by Raymond later that year.