Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello has resigned, effective March 30th. This comes after EA’s SimCity had one of the most botched game launches ever caused by their always-on DRM, which the company claimed was needed for gameplay (Liar whore, liar whore!). Although the game was still financially successful, selling 1.1 million copies, EA is nonetheless falling well below estimates for its earnings per share this quarter. The company is expected to announce earnings of 57 cents per share. They had expected to earn 72 cents per share.
John Riccitiello said in memos obtained by The Wall Street Journal, “My decision to leave EA is really all about my accountability for the shortcomings in our financial results this year. 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.”
EA’s stock has fallen 60% in value since Riccitiello became CEO in 2007. During that time, EA’s mismanagement of the SimCity launch was only one of many problems. Star Wars: The Old Republic underperformed, leading EA to make it a free-to-play game. EA also didn’t release any NBA games for three years in a row due to management setbacks.
Executive chairman Larry Probst, who was EA’s CEO from 1991 to 2007, is acting as the CEO until a permanent replacement is selected. I would make some schadenfreude-filled joke about this, but hearing about people losing their job totally bums me out. So instead I photoshopped John Riccitiello holding a giant sandwich for some reason.
This has been John Riccitiello and a giant sandwich. Thank you, and good day.
[Sources: Joystiq, Ars Technica, and WSJ. Thanks to JP for the tip.]
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Dude got fired. Dude needs a sandwich.
Don’t cry for him. I’m sure he’s worked out a dandy severance.
He gets pay 24 months of pay.
24 months of CEO pay (800K a year according to Forbes). For an average US household, that would be about 32 years of severance. And that’s ignoring his stock options.
He actually thinks the sandwhich is a copy of NBA ’14.
(Because he’s an EA executive, so obviously he doesn’t know how video games work.*spins Bowie as he blows slide whistle*)
I wasn’t aware SimCity was this relevant.
Well, the ongoing debacle probably didn’t help EA’s overall revenues.
SimCity is a huge name. People who don’t know anything about games know SimCity.
Any Sim City, or for that matter Civilization game that comes out will be hugely relevant. They are always solid titles well worth buying. Despite the DRM fiasco, the Sim City game is a great game. One can only imagine if it didn’t have the DRM how many more copies would have been sold. I’d like to see the 1.1 million that purchased it, because I don’t know anyone that has, but know tons that would have.
DRM aside, the game still has massive balancing issues and broken AI.
I never play any of these games but the commercial I saw for it looked pretty awesome. I was on the fence about maybe trying it out. I guess I might pass now.
+This Boy’s Life reference
Lucy Bradshaw’s the one spewing lies, if anyone needs to get axe’d it’s her.
He quit to avoid being fired. Sim City may have moved a million copies but that number doesn’t take returns into account, or the fact that they had to give away a free game. Their earnings per share went down so Johnny boy did too.
He probably had to push the Sim City release into Q1 because of how hard Star Wars Old Republic flopped. Maxis had to know this game wasn’t ready, so he was screwed either way.
So who’s next? Probably (hopefully) Peter Moore. If they bump up Rajat (their CTO) EA is fucked. Rajat already got fired from Microsoft twice.
Your comment brings up a point that I have never understood. How the hell do you continue to keep getting a job for just being a high profile fuck up?
Yeah I think these guys should give a master class on writing a resume.
I also can’t even fathom the amount of limp-dick marketing speak one has to learn in order to operate at that level of corporate culture. It’s not “downsizing”, it’s “department efficiency synergization”. Or it’s not “quitting in disgrace” it’s a “leadership transition”. The cognitive dissonance these corporate clowns operate with in the day to day would make my fucking head explode.
As a general rule, why we think guys like this get fired and why guys like this actually get fired are usually not the same.
There’s also the fact that managing an enormous company is a fairly rare skill set, and each industry has its own challenges. You have to basically be an absolutely toxic human being in every respect before nobody in an industry will hire you.
Hence whatshisface that ran NBC into the ground is now in charge of CNN.
As a friend of mine mentioned, stuff like this is the inevitable result of universities treating marketing as a science. People like him really don’t know what the fuck they’re doing and don’t truly understand the market.