John Riccitiello, CEO of Electronic Arts, is stepping down from his position, the company announced today. In addition, he will no longer be a member of the publisher’s board of directors.
Riccitiello offering his own comments on why he’s leaving EA has praised the publisher and its employees and also is optimistic for it’s future with the next-generation consoles like the PS4 and Next-gen Xbox on the horizon in a internal letter he made in EA’s website.
Now with all the sad news of Riccitiello leaving blah blah blah, let’s be real here. EA, a company which has spent the last few years since Riccitiello became CEO had been pissing off gamers the world over its consumer-unfriendly policies, use of day-one DLC like Mass Effect 3, acquiring smaller developers and closing high-quality developers like PopCap Games & Pandemic Studios.
When John Riccitiello became CEO of Electronic Arts in 2007, he put his thoughts on how the $60 dollar price tag for video games needed to be reduce to admitting the acquisition and destruction of high-quality developers in the past like Bullfrog, Origin and Westwood. What a noble man he turned out to be after 6 years!
Couple that with the fact of EA’s Origin still charging $60 to $50 (sometime more) per game even when it’s digital and not even new, in spite of it being a fully publisher-controlled digital format, the CEO’s opinion on fixed price rates became disingenuous.
It’s just hard to look at this event of Riccitiello leaving EA and not think about the disaster of Simcity. Wonder that was the last straw for Riccitiello to resign and not deal with the bs he’s been getting from gamers? 😀
Anyway good night sweet prince.
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