John Riccitiello, CEO of Unity, has submitted his resignation after nine years in office. Riccitiello will leave his position immediately, although he will continue to advise the company for a time while he changes leadership. He will also leave Unity’s board of directors, and will no longer be its president.
Hereinafter, James Whitehurst will be its interim CEO, after holding the same position at Red Hat and being President of IBM after it bought Red Hat. Additionally, Roelof Botha, the most senior independent director on Unity’s Board of Directors, will become Chairman of the company. The company will begin the search for a permanent CEO immediately.
This resignation comes when echoes of complaints from video game developers who use the engine developed by the company can still be heard after the announcement of a change in the pricing policy that Unity wanted to charge them starting next January. The change, announced in September, sought to charge developers from January for each installation of games created with their engine, even if they had only been purchased once, once a certain number of installations of the title were exceeded, and certain income, quite low.
The affected developers did not exactly receive the changes well, and many abandoned the platform amidst criticism in search of other systems and engines, such as Godot, which to date is the great beneficiary of all the controversy. Several days later, Unity backed down, apologized and announced that it was not going to implement the changes planned, but would propose other rates more appropriate to the requests of the developers. But the damage was done. Although Unity promised to listen to the developers, a good part of its clients have lost trust in them and are exploring other paths, which has caused Riticciello to finally have to resign.
As stated in the statement announcing his departure, “It has been a privilege to lead Unity for nearly a decade and serve the employees, customers, developers and partners who have been crucial to the company’s growth.«. Furthermore, Riticciello hopes «support Unity in this transition and continue the company’s future success«.
Photo: Techcrunch
