Unity CEO John Riccitiello 'retiring' from company weeks after pricing controversy

Chloyster [she/her]@beehaw.orgmod to Gaming@beehaw.org – 294 points –
Unity CEO John Riccitiello 'retiring' from company weeks after pricing controversy
eurogamer.net
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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?

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'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.

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.

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.