Unity CEO John Riccitiello steps down after disastrous fee proposals

Unity Technologies CEO John Riccitiello, who had held the position for almost a decade, is no longer with the company following the fallout over fee changes for the game engine.

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James M. Whitehurst is now the interim CEO and president of the company, with Roelof Botha, the lead independent director of Unity’s board, stepping into the role of chairman.

Unity is actively seeking a new CEO but Riccitiello “will continue to advise Unity to ensure a smooth transition”.

“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,” Whitehurst said in a press release.

In September, Unity unveiled its new runtime fees which would come into effect for customers once their game had overcome certain thresholds for installs and lifetime revenue.

However, the response from game developers to the changes was disastrous. For example, Re-Logic, the developer of Terraria, pledged $200,000 to the open source engines Godot and FNA to offer other opportunities to smaller studios.

Another 500 developers expressed their disappointment by demonetising their games, stopping any revenue from reaching Unity until they felt like they had been heard.

One analyst described it as a “PR disaster”, while others sympathised with the “outrage” over the changes but added that Unity’s price and value “has long favoured developers”.

Towards the end of last month, president of Unity Create Marc Whitten revealed the amendments to the runtime fees based on the reactions to the original.

These changes included game installs being self-reported to Unity, while the fee would be the lesser of the 2.5 per cent cut of the game’s monthly revenue or a calculated amount using the data on the game’s monthly engagements.

In other gaming news, Activision Blizzard shared that Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 or Diablo 4 will not land on Game Pass this year as the acquisition by Microsoft is still not finalised.

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