Unity president is ‘retiring’ after developer pricing controversy

Just under a month after Unity announced a new fee structure change that led to controversy across the entire video game industry, company president and CEO John Riccitiello is “retiring” from both roles effective immediately. 

Riccitiello, who previously served in the same role at Electronic Arts before leaving to join Unity in 2014, only made a brief statement in the company’s press release about the leadership transition—none of which acknowledged the massive elephant in the industry. 

“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,” Riccitiello said. “I look forward to supporting Unity through this transition and following the Company’s future success.”

Likewise, Unity did not mention the controversy anywhere in this statement at all, with the company’s independent director of board, Roelof Botha, simply thanking Riccitiello for his leadership as Unity grew into a key position as “a pioneer in the developer community.”

Officially, Riccitiello will “retire” from his roles as president and CEO, along with leaving the company’s board of directors—likely to provide Unity some distance from the ongoing scrutiny and potential backlash from developers and publishers in the industry. He will continue to remain in an advisory role with Unity “to ensure a smooth transition” before fully departing.

Prior to this, he also came under fire for calling devs who skip monetization options are ‘f***ing idiots’ and selling 2,000 shares days before this decision was made.

He is being replaced on an interim basis by James Whitehurst, who previously served as president of IBM from 2008 to 2020. Whitehurst notes he is 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.”

Unity has acknowledged the controversy in other statements, with Unity Create leader Marc Whitten openly apologizing on Sept. 22—before explaining the change for Unity’s Runtime Fee policy in more detail. Even that was met with skepticism, however, and there is still a lot of work to be done if the company wants to regain the trust of developers that it lost over the last month.