Tuesday, October 10th 2023
Unity CEO Steps Down After Engine Runtime Fee Plans
Unity CEO John Riccitiello is stepping down as president, CEO, chairman, and board member, effective immediately. The decision comes weeks after a big backslash from developers and community due to the announced Runtime Fee plans for the Unity game engine. John Riccitiello was Electronic Arts CEO from 2007 to 2013, after which he joined Unity as a board director in 2013 and became CEO in 2014, holding the position for over nine years.
"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," he said in a statement provided by Unity. "I look forward to supporting Unity through this transition and following the Company's future success," he added.
Unity has appointed James M. Whitehurst as interim chief executive officer. Whitehurst is an executive veteran, previously serving as President and Chief Executive Officer at Red Hat and IBM from 2008 to 2020.
"I am honored to join Unity as Interim CEO and President at this important time in its evolution," Mr. Whitehurst said. "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. I look forward to working closely with the Board and our talented global team to execute on our strategy, and I anticipate a seamless transition."
As announced earlier, Unity has partially pulled back its decision to charge developers every time a game has been installed, and said this will apply to Unity Pro and Unity Enterprise plans and, more importantly, will no longer apply to existing games.
Source:
Unity
"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," he said in a statement provided by Unity. "I look forward to supporting Unity through this transition and following the Company's future success," he added.
"I am honored to join Unity as Interim CEO and President at this important time in its evolution," Mr. Whitehurst said. "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. I look forward to working closely with the Board and our talented global team to execute on our strategy, and I anticipate a seamless transition."
As announced earlier, Unity has partially pulled back its decision to charge developers every time a game has been installed, and said this will apply to Unity Pro and Unity Enterprise plans and, more importantly, will no longer apply to existing games.
29 Comments on Unity CEO Steps Down After Engine Runtime Fee Plans
Oh well, let's try to remain slightly hopeful and resume the cynicism once the new guy gets in and proves to be even worse or just as bad
And regarding Marc Whitten, ex-Xbox (right after a bunch of losses and mass-layoffs ). Remember Unity lost 300 employees in January and then another 200 in June -
- www.eurogamer.net/unity-lays-off-almost-300-staff
- www.eurogamer.net/unity-lays-off-four-percent-of-workforce-to-realign-resources
So will Whitten be doing another round of layoffs like he did at Xbox?
The fact that he came from EA says it all actually...
Him getting ousted is the only logical out outcome here. Even if the plans came from the owners. He could have stepped down to signal they are really not acceptable right then and there or offered a better alternative, he did not.
Especially considering how important trust is for a game engine. Developers put a lot of money in a project that cannot easily be moved, so trust in the platform is extremely important.
As a result practically all programming languages are open source now.
Game developers will need to go through the pain of using software that can't be taken away from you at the whim of a CEO or a board. This doesn't mean that everything has to be OSS at once. The actual engine would have to be, but you could still use commercial tools for it.
I am a developer too but lets be little objective, the platform needs money to stay on feet or to develop and also make my job even easier. Greed from either side is not OK, People should be willing to payback. I am against overpriced software but I am also against not paying anything at all. Paying back should not be voluntarily or optional, as in Blender's donating system, because people simply wont pay enough and this free tools may die one day or be mis-used by greedy companies/people as well. Epic was/is lucky to have Fortinte but Unity doesn't have similar resource.
If that was possible, I don't think the Earth would still be here.