John Riccitiello is stepping down as CEO of Unity.
As reported by Video Games Chronicle, Unity made this announcement, as well as confirming Riccitiello’s successors. James Whitehurst will be Unity’s interim CEO and president, and Roelof Botha is the new chairman.
Riccitiello shared this message:
“It’s been a privilege to lead Unity for nearly a decade and serve our employees, customers, developers and partners, all of whom have been instrumental to the company’s growth.
I look forward to supporting Unity through this transition and following the company’s future success.”
Whitehurst also shared a message in relation to his new succession:
“With the company’s experienced leadership and passionate employees, I am confident that Unity is well-positioned to continue enhancing its platform, strengthening its community of customers, developers and partners, and focusing on its growth and profitability goals.”
Riccitiello is a longtime veteran of the video game industry. Following brief tenures in Wilson Sporting Goods and Sara Lee Bakery, Riccitiello joined Electronic Arts in 1997 to serve as its president and Chief Operating Officer. He left the company in 2004 to pursue new ventures, but then reentered EA to become its CEO from 2007 to 2014.
Riccitiello was an incredibly successful CEO, announcing that EA had earned more than $ 1 billion in digital revenue in 2011. However, he would exit in 2014 following poor financial performance in his outgoing year.
Riccitiello would then become an early investor in Oculus VR, before ascending to the position as CEO of Unity in 2014.
Riccitiello’s exit follows a two month controversy surrounding their shift to a new pricing model. However, his career at Unity, which lasted longer than either of his terms at EA, was itself marked by many successes.
Riccitiello joined the company just as Niantic launched the Unity-based Pokemon Go. In the following years, Unity would work on new technologies with Apple and Google, buy Weta Digital, launched an IPO, and more.
To put it plainly, Unity’s successful standing in spite of being a loss leader for the past few years was because of Riccitiello’s leadership. Game developers may welcome his exit from the company, based on the assumption he is solely responsible for the pricing model controversy.
Whether that’s true or not, Riccitiello’s business acumen is not easily duplicated by other game company executives. It may be accurate to consider this one of the major consequences for Unity’s poor pricing model announcement, alongside the huge numbers of developers announcing plans to stop using the engine.
