Unity CEO John Riccitiello ‘retires’ following controversies

Unity CEO John Riccitiello has “retired” amid controversies that have plagued the company under his watch. 

“It’s been a privilege to lead Unity for nearly a decade and serve our employees, customers, developers and partners, all of whom have been instrumental to the company’s growth,” said Riccitiello.

“I look forward to supporting Unity through this transition and following the company’s future success.”

Unity recently created widespread...

10 October 2023 | Development Tools

Unity’s runtime fee controversy: Diving into the why and how

unity game engine runtime fee controversy development coding programming

The recent rollercoaster ride of Unity's controversial runtime fee rollout has left the game development community bewildered and seeking answers.

After an initial announcement — followed by modifications and a reannouncement — Unity's President, Marc Whitten, addressed the issue in a live fireside chat on YouTube, attempting to shed light on the reasons behind this turbulent rollout.

Apologies for missteps

Whitten began by offering a heartfelt apology to the...

26 September 2023 | Development Tools

Details emerge around Unity’s fee changes after outcry

Details have emerged regarding the proposed changes to Unity’s controversial per-install fee plan for developers.

These changes come in response to the outcry and concerns raised within the game development community about Unity’s recently announced new fee structure potentially bankrupting developers.

Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier, known for his in-depth coverage of the gaming industry, has shed light on the potential modifications during a Unity all-hands...

19 September 2023 | Developer

Unity receives ‘credible death threat’ amid per-install fee backlash

Unity has been forced to close two of its offices and cancel a town hall meeting following a "credible death threat".

The unacceptable threat came on the heels of an announcement regarding a new per-install fee for developers using the Unity video game engine.

Just two days ago, Unity created widespread backlash across the gaming community by unveiling its intention to charge developers a per-install fee each time a player downloaded one of their...

15 September 2023 | Developer

Unity rejects AppLovin’s bumper takeover bid

Game development platform Unity has rejected a large takeover bid from mobile technology firm AppLovin.

AppLovin offered to acquire Unity in an all-stock deal worth $17.5 billion. However, the offer came with the stipulation that Unity drops its own bid for ironSource.

IronSource and AppLovin both offer services to help developers grow and monetise their apps.

Unity’s acquisition of ironSource would provide the latter with a significant advantage in both...

16 August 2022 | Development Tools

Unity CEO apologises for calling some game devs ‘the biggest fucking idiots’

Unity CEO John Riccitiello has apologised for a recent interview in which he called some game developers “the biggest fucking idiots”.

Pocket Gamer was interviewing Riccitiello about the game development platform’s merger with monetisation and distribution specialists ironSource when he made the comment.

Here’s the part of the interview in question (emphasis ours):

Pocket Gamer: Implementing monetisation earlier in the process and conversation is...

19 July 2022 | Gaming

Unity says PSVR2 takes VR gaming ‘to a whole new level’

Unity held a ‘Building Next-Gen Games for PSVR2’ session at this year’s Game Developers Conference and the company appears to be as excited as many developers about the upcoming VR hardware.

"PSVR2 takes VR gaming to a whole new level, enabling a greater sense of presence and allowing players to immerse themselves into game worlds like never before", says Bria Williams, Senior Product Manager at Unity.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJ2bCnX5Sh0

The original...

1 April 2022 | Gaming

Unity is buying Peter Jackson’s visual effects company for $1.6B

Unity has announced that it’s entered a definitive agreement to acquire Peter Jackson’s visual effects company Weta Digital for $1.6 billion.

Weta Digital has worked on hit films including Lord of the Rings, Avatar, Wonder Woman, and Black Widow. Unity says its acquisition will “democratise” Weta’s powerful tools to make them available for more creators.

“Weta Digital’s pipeline represents the most complete toolchain for 3D creation, simulation, and...

10 November 2021 | Development Tools

Unity partners with the UN and Project Drawdown to help create a sustainable future

Unity is often used to create incredible worlds people use to take a break from reality, but a new collaboration uses the 3D content platform to tackle a real-world problem that impacts all of humanity.

A new grant, the Unity For Humanity Environment and Sustainability Grant, has been launched in collaboration with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and Project Drawdown.

Jessica Lindl, VP of Social Impact at Unity, said:

“The future of humanity...

15 April 2021 | Development Tools

Unity flexes its robotic muscles in Object Pose Estimation demo

3D content development platform Unity is showing off how it can improve robotics in a new demonstration.

The new demo is called Object Pose Estimation and shows off Unity’s AI and machine learning (ML) capabilities. Training data is collected in Unity and used to train a deep neural network that predicts the pose of a cube. This model is then deployed in a simulated robot pick-and-place task.

Dr Danny Lange, Senior Vice President of Artificial Intelligence at Unity,...

2 March 2021 | Platforms