295
Unity CEO John Riccitiello 'retiring' from company weeks after pricing controversy
(www.eurogamer.net)
this post was submitted on 09 Oct 2023
295 points (100.0% liked)
Gaming
30553 readers
264 users here now
From video gaming to card games and stuff in between, if it's gaming you can probably discuss it here!
Please Note: Gaming memes are permitted to be posted on Meme Mondays, but will otherwise be removed in an effort to allow other discussions to take place.
See also Gaming's sister community Tabletop Gaming.
This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
He almost destroyed EA. Switched to Unity and almost destroyed Unity. Now what project does he join next?
Maybe Comcast, Facebook or Twitter? Do something good for a change.
I hope he goes to nestle.
Maybe FIFA organization for their official FIFA game? I mean has "experience" with it.
I fucking don't. Imagine WTF it would take for people to lose their shit effectively with that company?
Twitter already has a weirdo gutting it from the inside.
I've heard he's planning to run for the president of the US by 2030. \s
Nah, he’ll still be too young.
He might not be the best but he surely wouldn't be the worst candidate.
He's going to be in stiff competition with an orange jackass for cratering the US.
Did he do things over the last 10 years at Unity that almost destroyed them, or was it just this one thing?
He's been involved in several of the big Unity scandals, yes.
This most recent event wasn't one thing, it was a culmination of poor decisions. If Unity had been sunshine and rainbows all up until now, then the reaction wouldn't have been so bad. It was the final nail in the coffin, really.
Since he's been involved, it's been fuck up after fuck up.
Examples?
Off the top of my head there's failing to prepare for massive changes to the ads they could run on Apple and Google's platforms and then realising that the money they were making was way less than expected, purchasing a company associated with malware, calling game developers "fucking idiots", growing the company enormously over lockdown and then realising they've pissed all their money away. I don't really know what a CEO actually does so a lot of that could be just company decisions, but JR definitely seems like a loose cannon who can't help being wildly unprofessional.
Even if that decision wasn't exclusively his, he must've heard of it, and if he didn't, even worse.
Hilarious. Thanks
Thanks
The Unity engine itself is also being badly neglected, with long-standing bugs that crash the developer tools, or so I hear.
There was also a bunch of sexual harrassment that was swept under the rug. He's an incredible scumbag and a shitty CEO, which is why the psychopaths that inhabit corporate boards seem to love him
9 years of everyone telling him that forcing the UNITY splash screen on "baby's first game" was a bad idea and was hurting the engine, because people were assuming all games made in the engine were bad, because good games didn't show they also used Unity. Now that he is gone this changes.
Also he is a huge fan of the "metaverse" idea: https://venturebeat.com/games/unity-ceo-john-riccitiello-the-metaverse-will-have-millions-of-destinations/ and I am sure some of Unity's money went there at a time they could not afford it and with nothing to show for it.
Like what?
I wonder if he's actually just becoming a career scapegoat, taking the fall + a nice severance package(?) for decisions that were made by groups.
Yes, a bastard-for-hire.
he would fit ubisoft
Hope his golden parachute doesn't open
Good. Whoever thought he would be a good CEO at Unity should also be fired. Time to clean house and promote people who have a fucking clue.
Pretty sure that's these people, right?
https://i.imgur.com/hVeDn48.png
Edit: Actually this guy signed onto Unity in 2014 Unity was still privately held. It went public in September of 2020. Unity's founder, David Helgason is still on their board and served as some sort of Senior Executive whatever position at Unity. Dude still has a 4% share of their stock.
So anyway, probably this David Helgason character who hired him. And/or whoever else (including Riccitiello!?) who was on the board at the time.
The relationship between CEOs and boards of directors is so fucked up and incestuous...
In any case and in retrospect, Johnny boy was 100% hired to cue them for up for the eventual IPO and boy did he ever. It's amazing how fast companies go down hill when they become publicly traded.
Look how many of them are from private equity funds. No wonder they chose him in the first place.
"Know who should make big decisions about running our software company? Finance lizards, obviously!"
They get those people to help boost the credibility of the IPO and their experience in managing acquisitions and such.
After the IPO, a companies only goal is earning money for shareholders.
So which company will he destroy next? He devastated EA before he did all this to Unity if I'm not mistaken.
I hope people will still learn from this and come to Godot and help making it a better game engine ^__^
I misread your last sentence and thought you wanted him with the godot team.
Haha, o god, no. Bit a guy like him would probably not even for a second think about working for them even of they would give him 100% of the funding they receive now (50k?)
Too late, Unity ain't getting that lost trust back up anytime soon.
He heavily endorsed the bad decision made by Unity and his comments really didn't help the situation so this is a welcome decision. Of course this will likely not change Unity's direction.
@chloyster good, he's been a plague on the industry. When you see your customers as wallets with legs you are bad for the people and bad for the company.
Good. Fuck him- I hope he retires from the industry
He should start a game company with Don Mattrick and the ghost of Bernie Stolar. Then everyone will know which games NOT to buy, just like back in the days of Acclaim.
Get Peter Molyneux on board and the lineup would be perfect.
Don't forget Phil Harrison.
We did it Patrick! We saved the town.