After getting everything wrong, Unity finally does something right

Following a huge controversy around some planned changes to the way it charges developers for the use of its engine, Unity has announced that CEO John Riccitiello “will retire” effective immediately.

According to the announcement, the outgoing Riccitiello “will continue to advise Unity to ensure a smooth transition”, as the company kicks off “a comprehensive search process” to identify a permanent replacement for him to serve as CEO. It also reveals that James Whitehurst, who The Verge notes is an advisor at private equity firm Silver Lake, will step into that position in the interim.

“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 stated in the release.

He also added: “I look forward to supporting Unity through this transition and following the Company’s future success.”

The aforementioned backlash from developers and studios centred around the fact that the revised pricing structure outlined by Unity would have them pay an additional monthly Runtime Fee based on the amount of times games made using its engine were installed. The immediate aftermath of it saw many devs suggest that they were actively considering switching to using a different engine going forwards.

Unity has since addressed how the fees will affect the different plans it offers via an open letter.

Meanwhile, Riccitiello, who previously showed the importance of wording things in a manner that doesn’t straight-up insult people via some comments about mobile developers’ attitudes to monetising games, was temporarily added to the Wikipedia page for the concept of greed.

Alas, the picture of his visage which once adorned the page has since been swapped back out for a painting of Mammon, the personification of material greed from the Bible’s New Testament.

At least we’ll have that amusing series of events to remember Riccitiello by as he ventures into the great unknown space where corporate CEOs dwell while not heading up companies or being paid lots of money to turn up once a month, say some things, and then disappear back into the shadows.

If you fancy reading more about Unity, here’s a story about the company firing a manager who criticised one of its executives on social media.