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