Unity CEO Pickpocketed "Black History" has tried to make players pay per bullet in FPS games
Unity has recently caused great controversy by changing its pricing model to try to charge game developers based on game downloads, and Unity has been the engine of choice for independent game developers for many years, a strategy that has scared and confused independent game developers, and many developers are already considering changing engines. Unity's decision was tied to its CEO, John Riccitiello, who has come up with some pretty ridiculous ideas that are notorious in the gaming world.
Prior to joining Unity, John Riccitiello served as CEO of EA, and at a shareholder meeting in 2011, John Riccitiello floated the idea of having players charge $1 for reloading in Battlefield, saying, "When you've been playing Battlefield for 6 hours and you run out of ammunition in your magazine, and we're asking you to pay $1 to reload, you're really not that price sensitive."
John Riccitiello believes that paying by bullets is very beneficial to gaming: "It's a great model, and it represents a better future for the industry."
At the time, John Riccitiello was also a major driver of EA's move towards the expansion of in-game microtransactions, and although the bullet-by-bullet strategy was not implemented in the end, it still profoundly influenced the EA's development route. John Riccitiello left EA in 2013 and subsequently joined Unity, where its stock price fell 60%.
In 2022, then-Unity CEO John Riccitiello once again made a surprising statement, he didn't understand why developers would make zero-profit games, and claimed that developers who didn't take full advantage of monetization were "stupid idiots."
In addition, after Unity's new pricing strategy was announced, John Riccitiello was picked up by investment media outlet Guru Focus, who sold 2,000 shares of Unity stock a week before the announcement, and after this week's announcement, Unity shares plummeted, from $39 to $36, a drop of nearly 10%. John Riccitiello also sold 50,610 shares during 2023, but did not add any other shares.
John Riccitiello's history as a villain in the game industry is even reflected in some game works, and in Takeichi Suda's "Heroes Anymore: Travis Strikes Again" and "Heroes No More 3", the villain Utopia CEO Damon Riccitiello is set by John Riccitiello. The character is said to have originated from Takeichi Suda's experience working with EA to develop the game Curse of the Shadows, and Suda Modeled John Riccitiello's character on "Damon Riccitiello", a ruthless business tycoon addicted to power.