Unity CEO says developers not monetising games early are “fucking idiots”

Unity CEO John Riccitiello has said that game creators who do not implement monetisation earlier in the development process are “fucking idiots”.

In an interview with Pocket Gamer.biz, Riccitiello was asked to address why some developers are reluctant to monetise their game “earlier in the process”.

“Ferrari and some of the other high-end car manufacturers still use clay and carving knives,” answered Riccitiello. “It’s a very small portion of the gaming industry that works that way, and some of these people are my favourite 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, EA’s former CEO, went on to explain that the games industry has changed significantly over the years. “It used to be the case that developers would throw their game over the wall to the publicist and sales force with literally no interaction beforehand […] But this industry divides people between those who still hold to that philosophy and those who massively embrace how to figure out what makes a successful product.”

Today (July 15) Riccitiello tweeted that his words had been taken “out of context”, and added that he was “deeply sorry if what I said offended any game dev”. However, the CEO’s comments have already been criticised from developers across the games industry.

Suda51, after his own experience working with EA on 2011’s Shadow of the Damned, decided to immortalise John Riccitiello as a power-hungry villain who used to be a game designer’s violent abusive co-worker https://t.co/Ft2dqqqR5F

— left-handed banana (@EKTOutie) July 13, 2022

I think that John Riccitiello calling his users “fucking idiots” for not being bloodless business freaks is way worse than merging with an ad company to take over your data mining and ad delivery operations. Who could seriously keep using Unity for anything but cynical business?

— alex (@thestarboretum) July 14, 2022

“John Riccitiello thinks I’m an idiot,” tweeted If Found developer Breogán Hackett. “I think he’s a little greedy capitalist pig who only cares about money. I’m so tired of people like him ruining things I love.”

“While John Riccitiello is still Unity CEO our plan is to finish our current Unity projects and then migrate to Unreal Engine,” shared Beehive Games.

This week, Unity announced a merger agreement with Ironsource, which helps users monetise their apps. However, the merger has come under fire due to Ironsource’s development of malware.