John Riccitiello steps down

[Smeatza]

http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/18/ea-ceo-john-riccitiello-steps-down-larry-probst-becomes-executive-chairman/

Any thoughts? I reckon it was related to the simcity fiasco. Amongst others.
I don't know anything about the Probst guy whos taking over from him, aside from the fact he was CEO before. Perhaps it's temporary.

 

[Fappy]

I'm sure he was just sick and tired of taking all the heat for EA's consistent failures over these past few years. Whether this is good news or not for EA and/or consumers... only time will tell.

 

[Kmadden2004]

Mr Riccitiello has announced his replacement will be a cute and fluffy kitten.

EA's new CEO, Mr Mittens, hopes to change the company's image to something altogether more consumer-friendly and adorable...

 

[The Artificially Prolonged]

I had to check a few other sites just to be sure and yeah he's going. Did he fall on his sword after so many recent cock ups by EA under his watch or was he pushed onto it? Eh I don't care, bye bye John you won't be missed.

The big question is how will this effect the direction EA has been going? Will it be business as usual or with EA current stock value will the share be looking for the new CEO to repair some of the companies' image and get them moving in the right direction? Probably not, but I shall be optimistic that the change at the helm will be good.

 

[Jodah]

Mr Riccitiello has announced his replacement will be a cute and fluffy kitten.

EA's new CEO, Mr Mittens, hopes to change the company's image to something altogether more consumer-friendly and adorable...

Probably not enough at this point, even for the internet.

 

[Fireprufe15]

Sure, he "resigned". Also known in corporate langauge as "told to leave." Conveniently after SIMCITY became a major screw up. Anyway, Im glad that the man who thinks single player sucks and microtransactions are what we want is leaving. Maybe, EA will start making good games again.

 

[Sargonas42]

There has been a lot of pressure by investors against EA as of late. They aren't filled in on the finer details of a lot of the unannounced things in development, and so it's very hard to convince them "Awesome stuff is on the way!". That means in a string of things not performing well, combined with the SimCity fiasco, someone has to take the heat. To be honest, I wouldn't be surprised if he had the option of pinning this on Gibreau or Moore or someone else, and just said "Fuck it. I'm sick of always being the bad guy no matter what I do" and retiring comfortably and sparing anyone else the drama.

Honestly though J.R. has been eyeing the door for some time, but in no rush and on his own schedule. It's no secret Peter Moore has been waiting to take over the company pretty much since the day they hired him away from Microsoft to take over EA Sports, and Riccitiello as just waiting for the right time to turn things over to him. At least at a time like this Peter can take over at a point where "expectations are low" so to speak and ANY improvement will be seen as a quick win for him.

 

[lRookiel]

This makes me wonder what would happen if by some stupid chance that someone decent like Gabe Newell took over EA. :3

 

[Kitsune Hunter]

Spoiler: my feelings

Sorry, couldn't help myself, but considering all the sleazy tactics took by EA, because of his leadership, I say good riddance, now the only real question is what this means for EA under new leadership, could it now be able to redeem itself or would it now sink much lower?

But I'll finish off by quoting Jim Sterling, Goodnight, sleazy prince

 

[Sargonas42]

You mean EAs investors aren't as much cattle as a lot of their customers/players that start drooling over the next trailer for "AAA GAME" as soon as you show them and start forgetting everything else? Quel dommage...

Riccitiello was pretty much toast after the Star Wars: The Old Republic disaster and he should've stepped down then and there when the investors backlashed against him in a big way.
It was his "baby" and he facilitated the whole BioWare buyout thing and spent all that budget on it.

His replacement is not Peter Moore, but Larry Probst coming back: http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/18/ea-ceo-john-riccitiello-steps-down-larry-probst-becomes-executive-chairman/
He is not quite as risk aversive and has put more focus on long-term investments and profit in the past, but fundamentally it's still "same shit, different asshole".

I'm still hoping EA crumbles and goes the way of THQ within the next 3-5 years.

I think you have your roles confused. In 2007 when J.R. was brought back to EA to be the CEO, Probst stepped down as CEO but retained his position as Executive Chairman of the Board.Now that J.R. is resigning, since Probst is still Chairing the board, he will drive it's hunt for a new CEO, but I can GUARANTEE you he will not be taking on the role of permanent CEO. For lack of any nice way to put it, he is persona non grata in that respect (and the rest of the board would never support it). I still stand by my statement of believing the COO, Peter Moore, will take over as the company has been preparing for the likelihood of him doing so since the day he was hired.

This makes me wonder what would happen if by some stupid chance that someone decent like Gabe Newell took over EA. :3

How does Peter Moore sound to you.

Sure, he "resigned". Also known in corporate langauge as "told to leave." Conveniently after SIMCITY became a major screw up. Anyway, Im glad that the man who thinks single player sucks and microtransactions are what we want is leaving. Maybe, EA will start making good games again.

It's a bit hard to just run out a CEO without a messy fight. Make his life hell? Sure. Force him out? Hard. However he did the right thing, the right thing being own up for the companies leadership faults and step down himself, rather than send a handful of other exec packing. Was it all his fault? No. But as the person in charge of the executive staff the buck stops with him, and the miss steps that were not taken by him were taken by people who answered to him for whom he was ultimately responsible for. He did the right thing and took the heat for all involved rather than pointing fingers to his team. Still, aside from all of these missteps the man did some serious good. When he came in during 2007 he really revolutionized EA's position on a lot of things and started a renaissance that carried them above the sorry state of Activision. New IPs, a strong shift to digital, and some great innovation. Sadly his vision ran against the demands of the business needs of the company and he had to make compromises.

 

[WhiteTigerShiro]

Sure, he "resigned". Also known in corporate langauge as "told to leave." Conveniently after SIMCITY became a major screw up. Anyway, Im glad that the man who thinks single player sucks and microtransactions are what we want is leaving. Maybe, EA will start making good games again.

Well, EA's been making good games, just hopefully now they'll stop mucking them up with shitty practices.

 

[AyaReiko]

Sure, he "resigned". Also known in corporate langauge as "told to leave." Conveniently after SIMCITY became a major screw up. Anyway, Im glad that the man who thinks single player sucks and microtransactions are what we want is leaving. Maybe, EA will start making good games again.

Well, EA's been making good games, just hopefully now they'll stop mucking them up with shitty practices.

And they can start with giving up on their idiotic Origin scheme and go crawling back to Steam.

 

[Pandabearparade]

Somehow I doubt this is going to mean all that much in the grand scheme of gaming. EA will get another president who is more or less the same guy and stock prices will continue to drop.

 

[JemothSkarii]

I think it's good that he's stepped down. But still, I wanna see if it elicits anything from someone by showing this:


Flame on crazy EA, flame on

 

[Sargonas42]

There is something I want to add to all this.

The internet has a short memory it seems, as JR has done a lot of things for EA that the public should love but seems to forget. Allow me to copy a very well written post from elsewhere:

EA did change under his leadership, but it was mostly for the better. He fixed a lot of the problems there. He's a good guy who likes games. He actually plays games. That already puts him ahead of most publisher CEOs in my book.

Nobody seems to remember Erin Hoffman's blog detailing how badly employees were treated, working 100 hours a week with no overtime pay. When Riccitiello came back to EA he made it a priority to fix that, and huge improvements were made.

He established the EA partners program which offered good distribution deals to independent developers while letting them retain intellectual property rights. Almost all other publishers give developers shitty deals and take the intellectual property rights anyway. Crysis, Rock Band and the retail releases of all of Valve's games since Half-Life 2 were distributed under this label, along with many others. I don't think I've heard a bad thing said about it. This part of EA actually operates more like the original vision of the whole company, which was founded on the principle of giving developers the credit and share of profits that they actually deserved.

He greenlit unique games which tried new things in an industry which overwhelmingly favors low risk sequels. I don't think the old EA would have been interested in letting DICE make Mirror's Edge, and even though I don't consider it to be a great game I'm extremely glad that it exists. He also slowed down the rate at which EA would assimilate developers before bleeding them dry and shitting out their corpse. He gave studios more freedom and autonomy.

But while all of that was good for gamers and good for the industry as a whole it wasn't so good for the finances. Turns out that actually paying your employees costs money. His attempts to appease shareholders and get back to the previous levels of profitability without reverting to the old evil corporate ways have been much less successful, and have mostly resulted in a bunch of new reasons to hate EA.

The turn around from good EA to bad EA wasn't down to him. It actually happened while he wasn't at the company, it's just that the general opinion of EA has lagged behind actual events by a number of years. Riccitiello took a lot of blame for the shitty practices of the previous CEO despite the quality and variety of games improving along with employee satisfaction. The previous CEO was Larry Probst, by the way, who'll be taking charge again at the end of the month. If he ends up taking the CEO position permanently then the old EA will return, with improved finances along with all the old problems.

John Riccitiello was not the problem, and I'm genuinely sad to see him go.

Now, it's debatable that last line. I think along the way he might have become part of the problem without intent, in his quest to improve things and remain supported by the investors. In any case, the fact is if I was still working there I would be *terrified* even at the idea of Probst being a *temp* CEO (from both a Gamer and an Employee point of view). Heck as just a consumer only now I'm still pretty worried with him temporarily in charge and pray they seat someone like Peter Moore to replace JR.

I'm not saying JR is undeserving of any bad press, just that all of EA's woes do not belong on his shoulders solely, and that he did a LOT for EA and for us gamers while he was there. The odds are NOT in our favor that his replacement will be in the same mindset, and his temp replacement is considered to be worse than Activision's Kotick in the eyes of many.

 

[Savagezion]

I think it's good that he's stepped down. But still, I wanna see if it elicits anything from someone by showing this:


Flame on crazy EA, flame on

It elicits confusion by me as to why the hell Celine Dion is playing... and so loudly. I am not really getting the point of the video, even more so when you listen to the lyrics. Maybe wishing him goodbye, but burning a picture? Kinda crossed signals on the symbolism there. Maybe I am missing something.

 

[Dansen]

I think it's good that he's stepped down. But still, I wanna see if it elicits anything from someone by showing this:


Flame on crazy EA, flame on

It elicits confusion by me as to why the hell Celine Dion is playing... and so loudly. I am not really getting the point of the video, even more so when you listen to the lyrics. Maybe wishing him goodbye, but burning a picture? Kinda crossed signals on the symbolism there. Maybe I am missing something.

Its a reference to the titanic movie. Mandalore Gaming(youtube) has quite a few videos using Titanic to refer to ToR. You know, it was supposed to be the next big thing but ended up crashing and burning. The vidoes are mostly just bile he hurls at EA, amusing bile, but unproductive and negative nevertheless.