SAN FRANCISCO–(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Unity (NYSE: U) (the “Company”), the world’s leading platform for creating and growing real-time 3D (RT3D) content, today announced that John Riccitiello will retire as President, Chief Executive Officer, Chairman and a member of the Company’s Board of Directors, effective immediately. James M. Whitehurst has been appointed Interim Chief Executive Officer, President and a member of the Board. Roelof Botha, Lead Independent Director of the Unity Board, has been appointed Chairman. Mr. Riccitiello will continue to advise Unity to ensure a smooth transition.
This totally off topic, but back in the day Chad used to mean taking a giant dump or being a little piece of shit. So to me, you basically said the same thing twice.
I feel like the whole reason that changed was a Dad told his son “stop being a Chad kid”. So, when the kid asked what that meant, the Mom stepped in and said it means a cool dude. Then started telling all his friends “My Dad thinks I’m a Chad!”
So now its a giant Dad joke that has whooshed a whole generation.
Look, Unity that backed the changes of the fall guy have removed the fall guy they backed. Now they wait a couple years and use the idea later to hopefully less backlash with a new fall guy who they can remove if the backlash is bad again.
My only complaint is such maneuvers tend to come with golden parachutes - his mismanagement of Unity leading to the whole fee debacle and erosion of trust deserves no such soft landing.
Yeah I can almost guarantee that the original plan was always for him to leave. He was going to be the scapegoat with a golden parachute, allowing the company to keep the unpopular changes while disbursing the bad publicity. It’s exactly what he did with EA too.
Basically reddit’s Ellen Pao plan. Bring in someone unpopular to make the unpopular changes, then let them go with a massive payout while keeping the unpopular changes.
But then Unity realized that the companies weren’t going to forget about the unpopular changes and it wasn’t going to blow over. Companies started bailing left and right and switching to other engines. At that point Unity realized that the smoke was actually a full blown fire, and started doing whatever they could to try and regain some trust. But by that point it was too late, because companies had already seen the potential for abuse. And as the saying goes, when someone tells you who you are, believe them. So now companies are unwilling to go back to Unity, and Unity is grasping at straws.
Yeah I can almost guarantee that the original plan was always for him to leave. He was going to be the scapegoat with a golden parachute, allowing the company to keep the unpopular changes while disbursing the bad publicity. It’s exactly what he did with EA too.
I hadn’t considered that… fair point. Pay someone handsomely to take the immense PR hit and move on.
Yeah I can almost guarantee that the original plan was always for him to leave.
I don’t think so, mostly because of how long it took for him to be “retired” after the whole fiasco, almost a full month. Had it taken only a week, I’d find that more plausible, as that’d actually make it look like it was his fault and that Unity as a company “saw the error in their way”
Or it could be that they suck even harder at saving face than we thought.
Mostly. The runtime fee now only kicks in after $1 mil, and you are limited to a 4% cap, and they are honoring the old EULAs, so if you want to avoid the fee, you just stay on the current version of Unity. They can still eat my farts, but this is much better and won’t kill a bunch of games the way it would have before.
Yes, they retracted the original policy changes with one of those boilerplate “we’re listening to the community” apologies. But the fact still remains that they have done it once and could just as easily decide to do it again in the future. One of the biggest reasons people shifted to Godot is because it’s free and open source. Godot (like many other free open-source softwares) had struggled with adoption until now. But now that Godot has exploded in popularity and game devs have begun learning it, the hardest hurdle is already passed and there isn’t much incentive to switch back to Unity.
It’d be like if there was a mass exodus from Windows to Linux. And then Microsoft apologized for whatever caused the exodus, but everyone had already installed and learned the basics for Linux. There would be very little incentive for everyone to change back to Windows, because as Linux gets more popular and development progresses, it gets easier to use and more robust.
The biggest hurdle for switching to a new platform is overcoming user apathy. After all, users will choose to use what they already know, even if it’s slightly inconvenient. That’s why the first phase of pretty much any software launch is making it look similar to something that already exists. If you can greet users with a familiar UI, they’ll be more likely to consider adoption. But Unity managed to actively drive users away from their platform (and into the arms of an open-source competitor) so the biggest hurdle has already been jumped.
This fuckhead reminds me a lot of Phil Harrison, or several other high profile execs. They go around, middling performance and wordsmithing to do fundraising rounds. By all metrics they don’t do anything noteworthy except they get to be the one who lands in leadership roles at established companies, they siphon some salary and stock options for a while and hold lots of unproductive meetings internally while doing some hand wavey shit.
Zero accountability, pipedream visions that don’t materialize, and then they leave to go fuck something else up.
Unless there’s something I’m not aware of (which is very possible), what you said doesn’t make sense. The company was already publicly traded (so no IPO to pump up the numbers for), and none of the recent moves he made increased the stock price.
Dude was specifically hired for the IPO, he was hired in 2014 and the IPO was in 2020. So what you said doesn’t make sense. And before you say how do you know he was hired for the IPO. It’s a pattern that you see all the time. Founders step down, hire a CEO with experience, new CEO packs the board and c-suite to make the company seem more legit (probably packs the board with people suggested by the IPO underwriter) and raise capital to pump the value and get the valuation mentioned in the news. And boom company goes public a couple of years later.
Also the founders sold a shit ton of shares when the stock was around the peak. And even with the low price of today the founders are probably still billionaires.
As someone with his own company I can assure you that you don’t. Life is a lot easier when it’s not your baby on the line. Do you think he’s going to lose sleep over Unity? Not even a little.
Definitely. Still, if I had that much money, I would do something other than start a company to make more money. I’d try to accomplish something that helps others and makes this world suck a little less. Instead, I’ve focused my entire efforts towards the survival of myself and those close to me.
if I had that much money, I would do something other than start a company to make more money.
I wouldn’t be trying to make more money. I see myself operating a small business related to hobbies. Maybe model airplanes or ham radio or something. Breaking even would be fine.
What’s your number? The amount of money you would need to just walk away from it and live. See, I find that everybody has a number, and it’s usually an exact number. So what is yours?
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Fucked the whole company and bails
Standard CEO strategy. Probably got a gold parachute lined up
Don’t care, still looking at other engines. Public companies are poison.
Just chad shit.
This totally off topic, but back in the day Chad used to mean taking a giant dump or being a little piece of shit. So to me, you basically said the same thing twice.
I feel like the whole reason that changed was a Dad told his son “stop being a Chad kid”. So, when the kid asked what that meant, the Mom stepped in and said it means a cool dude. Then started telling all his friends “My Dad thinks I’m a Chad!”
So now its a giant Dad joke that has whooshed a whole generation.
Did the same at EA (IIRC).
EA is still around though
Wonder where he’s going next?
He used to be EA’s CEO
Preferably Epic. Pull the same shit again, then Godot gets even more funding.
Too little, too late 👋
Jim Whitehurst? The guy who sold Red Hat to IBM? Cool, cool, cool. Cool.
Look, Unity that backed the changes of the fall guy have removed the fall guy they backed. Now they wait a couple years and use the idea later to hopefully less backlash with a new fall guy who they can remove if the backlash is bad again.
And what a sweet deal it is for the fall guy.
“Hey we need to roll out an unpopular policy change. If you agree to take the PR hit we’ll give you $30 million”
Best gig in a lifetime.
Wonder what kind of severance he’s getting
My only complaint is such maneuvers tend to come with golden parachutes - his mismanagement of Unity leading to the whole fee debacle and erosion of trust deserves no such soft landing.
Typically written into the contract, it’s not like they are doing it out of love
You’re not wrong; I suppose my criticism is as much of that practice as it is of this individual specifically.
True, at the end of the day, he did irreversible damage to Unity’s image with this move.
In his defense, he likely wasn’t alone in making this decision or approving of it, so there’s that.
Yeah he’s definetely not innocent, but this is 100% the board at Unity throwing the CEO under the bus to try and control the damage
Yeah I can almost guarantee that the original plan was always for him to leave. He was going to be the scapegoat with a golden parachute, allowing the company to keep the unpopular changes while disbursing the bad publicity. It’s exactly what he did with EA too.
Basically reddit’s Ellen Pao plan. Bring in someone unpopular to make the unpopular changes, then let them go with a massive payout while keeping the unpopular changes.
But then Unity realized that the companies weren’t going to forget about the unpopular changes and it wasn’t going to blow over. Companies started bailing left and right and switching to other engines. At that point Unity realized that the smoke was actually a full blown fire, and started doing whatever they could to try and regain some trust. But by that point it was too late, because companies had already seen the potential for abuse. And as the saying goes, when someone tells you who you are, believe them. So now companies are unwilling to go back to Unity, and Unity is grasping at straws.
I hadn’t considered that… fair point. Pay someone handsomely to take the immense PR hit and move on.
I don’t think so, mostly because of how long it took for him to be “retired” after the whole fiasco, almost a full month. Had it taken only a week, I’d find that more plausible, as that’d actually make it look like it was his fault and that Unity as a company “saw the error in their way”
Or it could be that they suck even harder at saving face than we thought.
I haven’t followed the topic beyond the initial backlash - has Unity totally / partially gone back on the changes?
Mostly. The runtime fee now only kicks in after $1 mil, and you are limited to a 4% cap, and they are honoring the old EULAs, so if you want to avoid the fee, you just stay on the current version of Unity. They can still eat my farts, but this is much better and won’t kill a bunch of games the way it would have before.
Yes, they retracted the original policy changes with one of those boilerplate “we’re listening to the community” apologies. But the fact still remains that they have done it once and could just as easily decide to do it again in the future. One of the biggest reasons people shifted to Godot is because it’s free and open source. Godot (like many other free open-source softwares) had struggled with adoption until now. But now that Godot has exploded in popularity and game devs have begun learning it, the hardest hurdle is already passed and there isn’t much incentive to switch back to Unity.
It’d be like if there was a mass exodus from Windows to Linux. And then Microsoft apologized for whatever caused the exodus, but everyone had already installed and learned the basics for Linux. There would be very little incentive for everyone to change back to Windows, because as Linux gets more popular and development progresses, it gets easier to use and more robust.
The biggest hurdle for switching to a new platform is overcoming user apathy. After all, users will choose to use what they already know, even if it’s slightly inconvenient. That’s why the first phase of pretty much any software launch is making it look similar to something that already exists. If you can greet users with a familiar UI, they’ll be more likely to consider adoption. But Unity managed to actively drive users away from their platform (and into the arms of an open-source competitor) so the biggest hurdle has already been jumped.
Somewhat… Not completely but most of the really bad parts were changed https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2023/09/unity-makes-major-changes-to-controversial-install-fee-program/
He’s been there for 9 years, not like he was just recently hired.
And he was at EA for several years before it was voted Worst Company in the World two years in a row.
They were winning somewhere I suppose
You’re looking for blood you’ll never get unfortunately
Imagine working in gaming with an actual name that’s just the beginning of a Deez Nuts joke
This fuckhead reminds me a lot of Phil Harrison, or several other high profile execs. They go around, middling performance and wordsmithing to do fundraising rounds. By all metrics they don’t do anything noteworthy except they get to be the one who lands in leadership roles at established companies, they siphon some salary and stock options for a while and hold lots of unproductive meetings internally while doing some hand wavey shit.
Zero accountability, pipedream visions that don’t materialize, and then they leave to go fuck something else up.
The board that allowed him to present and push the idea forward is still there. The power structure that wanted this change is still there.
Riccitello is gone (and fuck him for many reasons) but Unity isn’t changed, it just has a different face.
I mean the board that HIRED him is still there. No one hires a guy like that and would be surprised about what they got.
“You’re the guy who put Microtransactions into FIFA? Come on in and sit down!”
They always knew.
So, his replacement is going to walk back this cluster-you-know-what, right? Right?
crickets
They already walked it back. The changes are fairly negligible at this point.
He did what he was hired to. Take the company public, turn the founders into billionaires and become the scapegoat when things go south.
Unless there’s something I’m not aware of (which is very possible), what you said doesn’t make sense. The company was already publicly traded (so no IPO to pump up the numbers for), and none of the recent moves he made increased the stock price.
JR joined many years before it went public
Dude was specifically hired for the IPO, he was hired in 2014 and the IPO was in 2020. So what you said doesn’t make sense. And before you say how do you know he was hired for the IPO. It’s a pattern that you see all the time. Founders step down, hire a CEO with experience, new CEO packs the board and c-suite to make the company seem more legit (probably packs the board with people suggested by the IPO underwriter) and raise capital to pump the value and get the valuation mentioned in the news. And boom company goes public a couple of years later.
Also the founders sold a shit ton of shares when the stock was around the peak. And even with the low price of today the founders are probably still billionaires.
Guys he didn’t need any severance. Dude was already loaded with shares. He’s sold 421 million USD worth of shares over the past few years.
I don’t understand people who have money like that and just hop from one company to the next. If I got money like that, I’d start my own company.
As someone with his own company I can assure you that you don’t. Life is a lot easier when it’s not your baby on the line. Do you think he’s going to lose sleep over Unity? Not even a little.
More stressful, but also more rewarding I imagine. Also, I don’t like being told what to do.
Definitely. Still, if I had that much money, I would do something other than start a company to make more money. I’d try to accomplish something that helps others and makes this world suck a little less. Instead, I’ve focused my entire efforts towards the survival of myself and those close to me.
I wouldn’t be trying to make more money. I see myself operating a small business related to hobbies. Maybe model airplanes or ham radio or something. Breaking even would be fine.
No one’s saying he needed it. But knowing how corporations work it’s quite likely he got a nice payout.
Paraphrasing from Money Never Sleeps:
I understand. I guess I’m more so pointing out a number that we have already.