Riccitiello out at Unity, effective immediately

Unity Announces Leadership Transition | Business Wire

Well that was quick.

A well deserved firing of a guy who screwed up the company finances and then set its reputation ablaze. This seems likely to be the end of the road for him as a video games executive and...I hope he has a happy and fulfilling retirement and never comes back.

Will this help Unity rebound? We'll see. Seems necessary but probably not sufficient to try and convince developers that the engine isn't a massive risk.

there's no quick fixes for trust- unless unity can put up some sort of absurd collateral, there's no way to snuff out the lingering doubt of future fuckery.

as for john, well- i'm sure he'll find some way to enjoy those executive savings.

Bye bye!

FWIW I remember seeing this Reddit thread as the whole mess was going down and thinking it was pretty interesting and that the person seemed to know what they were talking about.

And then Grubb retweeted this, seeming to support the theory...

I mean, whatever. I don't actually pay much attention to C-suite people in these companies, and I have no love for Riccitiello. The point is that this was clearly for the optics and seems unlikely to actually make anything better considering some of the a-holes still on the board.

My take:

Business guns will always keep firing. Riccitiello was let go because when the smoke cleared he hadn't landed the big new revenue stream the investors demanded.

Had he been able to land it he'd still be there no matter how bad it looked.

The board didn’t suddenly have some moral revelation. They wanted to save face and salvage as much of the brand as possible.

Maybe the new CEO’s direction will be more gamer friendly but I wouldn’t hold my breath.

Based on how the tech industry works, he'll be back at another company or use his golden parachute to just start one within the year!

He and Bobby Kotick can cheers Ronald Reagan's ghost for a total lack of oversight and consequences!