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.
I’m not sure if it’s an accident, but the value of $400m is exactly how much private equity firm Silver Lake invested in them in 2017. They were backed by a lot of private equity and VC money before they had an IPO.
Unity IPO’d 3 years ago in Sept 2020 at $52 per share, they’re now at $30/share, and have been under $50/share since May of 2022. The chairman of the board, Roelof Frederik Botha, is a partner at Sequoia Capital.
This is a business run by VC / PE people, that’s doing shitty in the market, and was doing badly before this whole license fee event. It’s not going to come to its senses and start behaving well just because the scapegoat CEO is gone. They need to juice their revenue streams to make investors happy, because it’s worth significantly less than it was at the IPO.
I just hope nobody is saying “Yay, now that the evil CEO is gone, Unity will be good again.” Anybody thinking that is just setting themselves up for whatever the company does next to juice their failing stock price.
