Former Electronic Arts boss John Riccitiello has not lost his touch at upsetting everyone when he speaks, and came under fire recently over game monetization.
Even after stepping away from Electronic Arts after throwing the company into a sharp quality decline and being behind some of the worst, anti-consumer decisions in the games industry, some of which have had last ramifications, Riccitiello was back in the news last week for some questionable comments he made during an interview with PocketGamer.biz.
Riccitiello said about game developers who do not seek to implement monetization in the creative process of making videos games are “fucking idiots.”
“It’s a very small portion of the gaming industry that works that way, and some of these people are my favorite people in the world to fight with, they’re the most beautiful and pure, brilliant people. They’re also some of the biggest fucking idiots,” Riccitiello said.
Needless to say, the internet and developers working hard on upcoming projects both on and off the Unity project were unhappy with Riccitiello’s comments about monetization. Here is just one example of a developer speaking out against Riccitiello’s comments:
“I made Apple’s iPhone Game of the Year in 2018 (Donut County) using Unity, but according to their CEO I’m a ‘big fucking idiot’ for not making Hole io, the f2p game that ripped it off,” indie dev Ben Esposito said.
All of this PR leads back to the original story of Unity purchasing the company Ironsource, an ad-tech firm whose stated goals are to help developers monetize their products better. At the same time that this purchase was put through, Unity also had laid off a large quantity of its own staff while continuing to pay Riccitiello’s incredibly high salary.
The heat seems to have caused Riccitiello to take pause and reflect before publishing a long apology tweet where he promised that he is “listening and will do better”.
Far be it from us to not take a person at their word, but we can count on one hand how many times some executive or public figure has said they will “listen and do better” and actually change any of their stances or policies for the better. We will have to see what happens going forward.
Before becoming CEO of Unity Technologies, John Riccitiello served as CEO of Electronic Arts from 2007 until 2013. In 2012 with the release of the controversial Mass Effect 3, a game marred with monetization issues, Riccitiello would lead his company to being voted “Worst company in America” in 2012, and then would go on to win title again in 2013 with the release of the equally disappointing Dead Space 3. So poor choices and greed are not new to John Riccitiello, and we doubt this will be the last time we hear from him again.
