John Riccitiello for the most part has had a pretty storied past in the gaming industry. He was mainly known as the Head of EA games for a time. Outside of that, ever since 2014, he’s been with Unity. Unfortunately, his tenure has seen more good than bad.

Back in 2022, he announced his support for generative A.I. tools. For the most part, this was met with negativity. And when you see how A.I. can eliminate jobs even at the higher levels, you can see why. But the big issue that may have caused this departure was when he announced Unity would add a runtime fee for any games built with their engine. Initially, every time a Unity game was downloaded, the developer would have to pay a fee for that. And to make matters worse, it would have been retroactive. So games from the PS3 and 360 era that small and mid-range developers no longer even work on could have really hurt them financially. Unity has since made alterations to the policy. But now trust is gone. And small to mid-range developers are weary and looking for other options.

If this is his final stop in gaming, he’s going to be leaving a very negative mark on the gaming industry.

Source: Game Industry