A Much Deserved Defenestration

I don't do much covering of computer gaming because I don't do serious computer gaming. 

That being said, the self-immolation of Unity, the cross platform game tools developer does catch one's attention.

Short version, they sold their tools royalty free, then they reversed themselves and came up with terms of service that would have bankrupted a number of game publishers.

They have partially reversed themselves, but the damage has been done, and any goodwill that they had was gone, and people have continued to move frantically to things like Godot,  Unreal, etc.

Now they have pushed their CEO John Riccitiello, the architect of their disastrous decision, but I think that the problem is more than just him.  

They had to know what they would get when they hired a former CEO for Electronic Arts.

Short sighted stupid greedy bastards is kind of a signature characteristic of managers at most levels of EA:

John Riccitiello, the chief executive of Unity Technologies, abruptly stepped down on Monday, less than a month after a change to the company’s pricing structure infuriated thousands of software developers who rely on the video game company’s tools.

Unity, which makes the underlying software that powers video games, has long imposed an annual licensing fee on developers. But in September, the company said it would begin charging developers additional money each time someone downloaded one of their video games. That meant developers would pay more as their games increased in popularity. Mr. Riccitiello was one of the main proponents of the change.

………

Unity did not give a reason for Mr. Riccitiello’s departure after nine years at the company. He was also the company’s president and the chairman of its board of directors. Unity did not respond to a request for comment and Mr. Riccitiello could not be immediately reached for comment.

His swift exit underscored the precarious position Mr. Riccitiello found himself in after an attempt to fix a corporate balance sheet awash in red ink. But the abrupt shift in the company’s financial model angered many programmers who rely on Unity for their own businesses.

………

Mr. Riccitiello is no stranger to controversy. He spent nearly two decades at the video game giant Electronic Arts, including a stint as chief executive, and gained a reputation for trying to squeeze money out of games in ways that sometimes frustrated players.

He once floated the idea to stockholders that players might be willing to pay a dollar every time they needed to reload their virtual guns while playing Battlefield, a popular first-person shooter game. In 2013, Mr. Riccitiello left E.A., apologizing for the company’s poor financial performance.

This guy should not be closer to managing a gaming related company than assistant manager at a Chuck E. Cheese, and the management at Unity had to have known this when they hired him. 

The damage has clearly been done, the only question is whether Unity will continue as a much diminished company, or simply end up a greasy stain on the floor of some sort of merger deal.

My money is on the latter.