Electronic Arts CEO resigns

[nsane.forums]

No official reason given, but resignation comes soon after the doomed SimCity launch.

John Riccitiello, CEO of Electronic Arts, has resigned from the company per a memo issued to press outlets Monday. Riccitiello will step down as both the CEO and as a member of the company’s board of directors effective March 30. The memo did not name a replacement or outline any succession plan in place.

Kotaku notes that under Riccitiello's leadership starting in 2007, EA's stock went on the decline—in late 2008 it went from around $50 a share to around $20, and it has never recovered.

"It has been an honor to serve as the Company’s CEO," said Riccitiello in a statement. "I am proud of what we have accomplished together, and after six years I feel it is the right time for me pass the baton and let new leadership take the Company into its next phase of innovation and growth." Larry Probst, who served as EA's CEO from 1991 to 2007, has been named executive chairman while the company searches for a replacement CEO.

While neither EA nor Riccitiello has cited an official reason for the resignation, the CEO's departure follows the catastrophic launch of EA’s most recent title, SimCity. The release was plagued by server problems compounded by the lack of offline play, an issue that was eventually “solved” by hacks and mods from the community.

EA followed up the widespread problems with quibbling over refunds, and reviewers came back with middling reviews and the documentation of AI problems. However, the game was still an extremely successful launch from a more conventional metric: 1.1 million copies sold in the two weeks following its release.

Update: The Wall Street Journal dug up both the farewell letter Riccitiello sent to employees and his resignation letter. In the former, the CEO outlined the reason for his departure.

"My decision to leave EA is really all about my accountability for the shortcomings in our financial results this year," Riccitiello wrote. "It currently looks like we will come in at the low end of, or slightly below, the financial guidance we issued to the Street, and we have fallen short of the internal operating plan we set one year ago. And for that, I am 100 percent accountable."

View: Original Article

[DKT27]

Kotaku notes that under Riccitiello's leadership starting in 2007, EA's stock went on the decline—in late 2008 it went from around $50 a share to around $20, and it has never recovered.

I guess, it was under him that EA went from bad to worse.

[LeetPirate]

That Origin trash fail so hard yet they keep pushing it and burying themselves deeper in shit. They had the lamest excuse conceivable for introducing Origin instead of publishing their games to Steam. The sad part is Origin looks like they stole the orange, grey and blue colours from steam but they still suck. Not to mention BF3 is still using that 1980 punkbuster trash that remains on your computer even after you uninstall the game. Everytime I think about it I want to puke from the ugliness of it all.