Unity has a new CEO: Matthew Bromberg

https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20240501573979/en/Unity-Appoints-Matthew-Bromberg-as-New-CEO

Bromberg succeeds interim CEO Jim Whitehurst, who will transition to the role of executive chair of the board. Roelof Botha will move from chairman of the board back to lead independent director.

I find it interesting that both the "new ceo" news and the "unity 6 preview" story are released simultaneously. I ask myself if that was a move to burry some news or generate positive momentum for both

UPDATE:
Since the comments are already all about negativity I thought I give some hope with this find (thanks to reddit):

3 Years ago (MB about acquisitions):

Quotes:
"It's general a terrible idea to try to fix your own problems by buying another company."
"I think the mistake that a lof of companies make when .. they get into the game of the transaction and imagine that the transaction is the point of the whole thing when in fact the point is the next three years .."

Does not sound so bad to me. Ofc one never really knows but I feel like that he is quite different from former CEO JR.

 

Oh joy. Yet another former EA executive. Goodbye Unity. It was nice knowing you.

https://seekingalpha.com/news/4097973-unity-appoints-former-ea-executive-matthew-bromberg-as-ceo

 

Not just EA, Zynga too, the uncrowned king of predatory pricing and addiction-architect on mobile.

 

I am currently searching for interviews to get a feel for what kind of a person he is.

3 Years ago (at Zynga):

10 Years ago he was at Bioware (guess due to EA):

If anyone finds anything more recent please share. Would love to know more.

 

Everything I'm finding says that he's been involved in mobile and online game development with a focus on esports games, and in the financial industry outside of game development. He's involved with a company called Blackstone which is a private equity company similar to Silver Lake.

https://www.blackstone.com/news/pre...omberg-former-coo-at-zynga-as-senior-advisor/

He's on the Board of Directors for a dating app and an online bank. Both appear to be operating in the red.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bumble
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monzo

His Linkedin suggests that he was involved in FIFA which for anyone who isn't aware was one of EA's "let's put out a new game every year with almost nothing changed" sports games.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthew-bromberg-79836b13/

Everything suggests to me that he's just another John Riccitiello.

 

After everything that happened in recent years, I did not expect Unity to hire a former EA and former Zynga executive as the new CEO. Is this move completely tone deaf, or is there something I am missing?

 

Yeah, this whole trend what we see on mobile started with Facebook, Zynga and Farmville after all.

Zynga, EA, Blackstone ...
Total joy to have him. I'm sure nobody better could have been found.

"Founded and led a location-based communication platform that rewarded kids for staying connected to their parents. By sharing location, taking pictures, tagging friends, and updating their status, kids earned points that could be exchanged for parental rewards. Acquired in a private transaction."

 

Yeah my first thoughts were to selling customer data and what would happen if the system was hacked.

https://web.archive.org/web/20111021072226/https://mashable.com/2011/10/19/imok/

And then I read this section.

Great. The app was targeting kids for monetization. What a fantastic CEO for this company.

 

Yikes, I liked the direction Jim Whitehurst was taking. This sounds like John Riccitiello v2.0.

 

Hey, exploiting children and child labor is the industry standard nowadays. Just take a look at Epic/Fortnite and Roblox. I guess Unity doesn't want to be left out of that pie.

 

I cant believe that after everything they put another Riccitiello in place. Unity really is so out of touch / incapable of reading the room even when the room is shouting at them and on fire.

 

Made with Unity.

It is totally on brand though. Ignore every single feedback users give, do their own thing, watch as everything burns down, the staff tries to defend every single misstep in overtime. Rinse and repeat.

Even before that Zynga was developing addictive Facebook games like Mafia Wars and whatnot. That was less monetized, but hey, they had to learn how to exploit people properly somehow...

 

0 lessons learned. I guess no one wanted the job in a failing, unprofitable company and he's here to do another performance of extraction capitalism to enrich himself and his ilk while the product continues to slowly decay.

 

I mean Whitehurst communicated exactly two things

1. Business as usual
2. Focusing on the core product (ads and services)

And that's exactly what's happening.

I think people just got confused and hopeful for a bit because some Unity employees stated that the vibe is different and the air has changed and the focus is renewed and whatever else they deluded themselves with.

 

Oh, so that's what they mean with the "Company Reset".

 

Yes, when computers had a reset button and you pressed it, eventually it rebooted and you got back exactly where you were (with the added possibility of some bad sectors).

 

Did you really think things were going to get better just because "we hear you" Hahahaha...
i thought you were here just like me, because you need to finish your main project to finally forget about this sinking boat...

Well, for a dating app, i guess red is good XD (bad joke, sorry)

I remember there was a backlash because they didn't even change the signs with the previous years texts XD, i fits perfectly here i guess

mg -.-"

I don't even know what to say... I still think these guys wants Unity to be an assets for another company and i really feel like unity 6 is their "final fantasy" if you know what i mean...
Most of the community prefer to learn a whole new game engine and get away from unity now, but i guess, the smartest thing to do here is, instead of listen to your community and regain the their trust like for example: Hello Games or CD Project Red (the first 2 that came to my mind) ...... no no what are you? smart?.... no we need to follow the most loved company in the gaming industry, yes, EA, making money on unethical and almost ilegal ways like, like... runtime fees yeah!!! and lets hire a guy who runs companies that are operating in the red... yeah, i can smell the money from here....

 

No. I knew a "reset" meant doubling down on mobile gaming and ad revenue. I just wasn't expecting a second and quite possibly worse version of John Riccitiello. I was thinking we would end up with a CEO more along the lines of Jim Whitehurst.

I am.

 

"Whitehurst gave off the energy you find around many executives in the traditional corporate world, but his words grew sharp when he described how most companies are "big, dull, beaurecratic things." It was here he seemed to cast a critical eye back at the Runtime Fee fiasco, warning how companies that build great products, become "sales-led," start not building great products, and then become "finance-led.""

https://www.gamedeveloper.com/busin...wants-unity-to-be-product-led-not-finance-led

I read that and realized Jim was done for. The investment bankers running Unity were never going to take that kind of talk lying down.

 

Time to look at Godot again, I suppose...

 

It’s explained by steve jobs

 

Well, I wanna hear what Matthew has to say, but right now, and having read what Jim had to say, I wish he would have been permanent.

 

this engine is going places.

 

When has a Unity CEO said anything that panned out well?

 

Here's what we have right now.

https://venturebeat.com/games/unity-appoints-ex-zynga-exec-matthew-bromberg-as-ceo/

 

This is great news!!! For Godot.

 

I am not surprised actually. It is still the same board after all. It didn't changed. Or at least not significantly.

 

Godot has own internal bad stories. Which people pretend to not talk about, as if Godot is a god of open source engines.

 

Hm, yeah ... hope he has a bit more to say. ^^
Jim was much more direct with his focus. I know it's just some words but focusing on the product is good in my book and rang true for many unity devs that it gave them some hope and motivation for the future. I hope it stays that way.

Although the statement from Matthew is vague enough to weasel into any direction.

 

> “I am thrilled to join Unity as it embraces its next chapter,” said Bromberg

It’s going to be a chapter 11, isn’t it.

 

Ah, yes, revenue growth and profitability. inb4 raised subscription prices (again) and whatever micro-transaction bullshit they cook up next.

 

Being a god of open source engines is a low bar to clear, to be fair.

 

Or back to from Unity 7 to Unity 2024/2025 in the next release

 

Godot has nearly 2.5k volunteer contributors. I trust that more than another ex-EA microtransactions CEO and Unity corp.

 

UE 5.4 just came out too.

 

Ok, so where is Unity Weta Tools now ... ? Why this screenshot is even there. Doesn't promotes anything good to be honest.

 

lmao, they cancelled the weta tools already, licensed them out to some 3rd party VFX house, and laid off all people working on those tools. Weta tools are dead in the water.

 

There isn't that much considerably, if you think about it.



300 at the peak of 2023/2024. Then on average 200 since 2017/2018. No much gain past 6 years. Is rather flat to me.

There is no significant change in the past year.

https://github.com/godotengine/godot/graphs/contributors?from=2013-08-18&to=2024-04-14&type=c

 

say what you want,

you legally own your godot copy

you can legally make your own godot repo community, and compete with godot.

anything you struggle with in godot, is legally yours. Just hide the original license in a source file or something if someone tries to sue you and your game. Also, no runtime fees if anything godot helps you create somehow "sticks" with the customers you sell to.

It's really good that it exists as an alternative to SDL2/OpenGL/FNA/Monogame, if you view it that way, godot is amazing alternative, maybe not when compared to Untiy.

 

I have no time for developing engine. I want to make games and use them.
Regardless which engine I use. I let having fun with engines to other devs.

 

You can if you're competent enough to do it. Frankly though I don't think it's going to be necessary. It's improving which is more than I can say about Unity right now.

 

Yes, I agree with this time saving sentiment.

I just wish Unity was more stable and had more open sourced components, it would be like have

"com.unity.community.<package>"

 

This sequence of event from runtime fees to John leaving to Jim resetting and Matthew taking over seems too scripted not to have been the plan all along..

 

Sound like Unity: "Let cool down the share holders, give them carrot and then give another try after Unity 6 is released"

 

lol we are saying exactly the same about Unity for years XD

it was pretty obvious for many of us that they were not doing any real changes when they stayed on the runtime fees path.. I think what surprises us more is, they could put one of their friends as a CEO or someone else that is not an ex EA XD but they did it... another ex EA is like "we've heard you........ but we don't care, can you understand it now, please?" XD it's hilarious tbh

 

Wait isn't Zynga the company that bought and sank Natural Motion? .... Maybe this guy is perfect for Unity

 

But Godot now has Brackeys!

 

I’m pretty sure all of Unity artistry tools have been axes, could be wrong

 

And? Unless it meant to be saracasm ...
Unit has it too. Months and months of content. Anyone can learn from it. Plus tons of other content availble from other YT and various webistes.
He can literally pull of any time, as he did with Unity. Even when Unity was supporting him at some point.
So not really big deal to be honest.

 

I don’t think I meant it as sarcasm per se, but I did mean it to be funny. In any case, anyone can take it anyway they want. I’m still using Unity but I’m gonna start experimenting with Godot.