Former EA CEO will be replaced in interim by James Whitehurst from IBM/Red Hat.
John Riccitiello, CEO of Unity, the company whose 3D game engine had recently seen backlash from developers over proposed fee structures, will retire as CEO, president, and board chairman at the company, according to a press release issued late on a Monday afternoon, one many observe as a holiday.
"Well, guess my work is done. I'll take my $400 million golden parachute and just step over the pieces of my broken company as I shuffle out to my car. Peace, bro."
Pisses me off that CEOs never get fired for their bullshit and get to "retire" or "resign" like they didn't just make the most boneheaded decision that severely hurt the company.
There really needs to be some organizational structure where the CEOs have the power to make the decisions they make, but the employees have the power to punish and fire them when they do shit like this. No golden parachutes for them!
Now do the Board who chose an EA CEO with his track record to lead Unity and stood behind this until finally forced by the consequences of his actions to push them out.
Certainly and after what happenned, merelly pushing out one guy in the nicest, most career protecting way possible, isn't sufficient to restore my trust in Unity as a platform on top of which to base my business.
Yeah, after burning down something popular, he get off without any repercussions (aside maybe a big bag of cash) and is likely to go find the next successful thing to burn it down, to get another big bag of cash.
Can we purge these people out once they failed everywhere?
Out with the old guy and in with the new guy. No change to the incentive structure. I wonder if things will turn out differently this time?
I hope Unity users will get to continue to use the tool they have spent so many hours learning. I also think the industry should try to make things more CEO proof.