Unity Appoints Ex-Zynga Exec Matthew Bromberg As CEO (venturebeat.com) 12
Unity has appointed Matthew Bromberg, former CEO of Zynga, as its new CEO, president and board member. "Filling a role that has been temporarily filled by former Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst, Bromberg will formally join Unity as CEO on May 15," reports VentureBeat. "Whitehurst will serve as executive chair of the Unity board, and Roelof Botha will transition from chairman to lead independent board member." From the report: Bromberg fills a slot vacated by John Riccitiello, who resigned last fall after a pricing debacle that left game developers extremely angry at Unity. They calmed down after Unity walked back major parts of the price increase. It's an important time for Unity as it is about to ship Unity 6, the latest version of its game engine, in competition with Epic Games' Unreal Engine 5.4. Whitehurst will also return to Silver Lake, one of Unity's two largest shareholders, where he had previously been a senior advisor and will now join as a managing director leading both operating and investment team initiatives.
Bromberg brings over 20 years of experience across the gaming industry, having previously served as Chief Operating Officer of leading mobile game developer and publisher Zynga, where he played a key role in the company's turnaround, and was responsible for Zynga's game studios globally, while also overseeing product development and design, technology, data, and analytics. Bromberg also held multiple leadership roles at Electronic Arts, where he helped scale the company's mobile division and led teams on four continents that built popular games across all major genres.
Bromberg brings over 20 years of experience across the gaming industry, having previously served as Chief Operating Officer of leading mobile game developer and publisher Zynga, where he played a key role in the company's turnaround, and was responsible for Zynga's game studios globally, while also overseeing product development and design, technology, data, and analytics. Bromberg also held multiple leadership roles at Electronic Arts, where he helped scale the company's mobile division and led teams on four continents that built popular games across all major genres.
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And pixel farming?
Unity has been going downhill for a long time (Score:1)
Its too bad because Unity is currently a really good engine. But the top brass at Unity know that most of their revenue comes from crappy mobile games with ads, not amazing things like Kerbal Space Program or Outer Wilds. I don't think they realize that people aren't going to learn unity and invest in it just to make crappy zynga-style mobile games.
Very few people actually want to make zynga games instead of getting a job as a software development company that actually pays them real money, and no college w
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I have been experimenting / playing with Unity over the years - even spent a bunch of money on models, plugins, etc in the unity store.
That all stopped when they tried to screw around recently with developers with stupid payment plans and no grandfathering.
Been playing with unreal since then, unity is nuked, and all the stuff I bought for unity is just dumped.
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There are actually pretty decent converters from Unity to Godot and Unity to Unreal out there. Naturally they wont convert scripts, but for assets, its a pretty well covered area. (And its not like you necessarily need it. Unreal is very much a batteries-included sort of engine. You need to spend a LOT of money on Unity to get the basic functionality that comes out of the box in Unreal.)
Buttons (Score:1)
How many buttons should I leave open for my new CEO presser? Is three too many?
tough choice (Score:5, Insightful)
Pretty difficult to find a worse choice, I'd say.
Zynga. A name that makes everyone who knows what it means turn around and run the other way. An exploitative evil empire.
If after Unity got extensive flak for trying to push through a hostile pricing model someone asked what kind of person to choose as the next CEO to remove that stain from your reputation - I think "CEO of Zynga" came dead last by a wide margin and then some intern sorted the list the wrong way around.
My confidence that Unity is going to do the right thing just dropped from zero to absolute zero.
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And you missed the part where it says he's also worked in multiple leadership roles for EA... it's a bit like proudly announcing that the hen house is under new management and the new head fox has a long experience in the poultry field.
Man gets job. (Score:2)
At least, that's what I understood from the article. You could get a PR & marketing "team" to write something pretty similar about a pizza delivery rider job. In fact, that's a well-worn meme on the interwebs pipes.
Unless you're a mobile game developer, run! (Score:2)
Nice of them to confirm our choice to leave (Score:2)
Unity 3D, now the engine for bait'n'switch advert delivery "games" and nothing else.
The head of Zynga.
Head. Of. Zynga.
To recover from loss of customers because of deceptive and bad faith business practices.
Well, at least it's shut up the last dissenting voice who was dragging his feet about getting on board with the new toolsets.
Simply Unreal (Score:2)
n/t