this post was submitted on 09 Oct 2023
1002 points (98.5% liked)

Technology

59709 readers
2983 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots


founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

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.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 125 points 1 year ago (6 children)

This is actually wrong. There's a near 100% chance that the decision was made by the board, and also the decision to remove the CEO. So we're talking about the fall guy, but being an insider, the fall guy will get a tidy sum for the dive

Then the CEO can be recycled to some other project, and a new CEO instated at Unity, so they can pivot or double down with no moral dilemma. In reality, the board was there all along and it's all a big PR game

[–] [email protected] 35 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Also if we're talking about avoiding responsibility cause of privilege then the boards of companies are the topic.

The C suite are just managers, usually wealthy from their own career rather than heritage. Board people are almost all old wealth, a parasitic race of nepo babies who ruin everything.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Yeah man, the hubris it takes to meet only a few times a year, but imagine that you have the elite wisdom needed make all the decisions. You're the guy on the board, so by definition you must be smarter than the worker bees, huh?

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago

CEO may have even wanted to leave anyway before the announcement and agreed to make this unpopular announcement knowing that he'd take the bad blood with him when he left.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Maybe, but I'm betting that the CEO who floated the idea that FPS players would be willing to pay per-reload didn't push back too hard against the board's ideas.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Unity is a public company. Look at their share price:

https://yhoo.it/3ZNqeJJ

The company IPO'd 3 years ago at $52 a share, it tanked in late 2021, and since then has been way below the IPO price. Non-investors only started paying attention in September when they came up with their ludicrous licensing fees. But, for investors what mattered was the way their investment cratered in late 2021 / early 2022.

The investors want returns. This isn't going to be a matter of finding a good CEO who can treat gamers and the gaming industry right. That kind of CEO isn't going to get the investors back to $175 a share. The board is going to demand someone who finds a new way to tap new revenue streams, even if it makes people miserable. This one particular gambit failed, but the board isn't just going to sit back and accept that the IPO price is too high. The chairman of the board is a partner at Sequoia Capital, one of the main pre-IPO investors. My guess is that the VC / Private Equity people didn't manage to cash out completely before the stock price crashed. So, they're going to figure out a way to juice the share price so they can sell, even if it means killing the company in the long term.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

They obviously recruited him for the role for his great work ruining EA

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Except that guy was CEO and board

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Most CEOs are shareholders, this is nothing new or unusual