No one to fill Riccitiello's shoes just yet.
Gaming company Electronic Arts has announced that CEO John Riccitiello will step down at the end of this month. It's not clear whether Riccitiello is retiring or leaving for another opportunity, but EA has not yet found a replacement CEO. The company says Larry Probst has been appointed Executive Chairman to ensure a smooth transition and he will lead EA's executive team while the Board conducts a search for a permanent CEO.
"We thank John for his contributions to EA since he was appointed CEO in 2007, especially the passion, dedication and energy he brought to the Company every single day," said Probst. "John has worked hard to lead the Company through challenging transitions in our industry, and was instrumental in driving our very significant growth in digital revenues. We appreciate John's leadership and the many important strategic initiatives he has driven for the Company. We have mutually agreed that this is the right time for a leadership transition."
Probst has been at EA since 1991 and has been Chairman of the Board since 1994. The company says the search for a CEO will include both external and internal candidates, so get to work on that resume!
Ya he has moved on to a great opportunity called unemployment.
My first order is to fire anyone who thinks single player DRM is a good idea, then I will make all games available on Steam too.
So he's the asshole who pulled every single newish EA game from steam and made them origin exclusives? His "very significant growth" lost him my revenue in the form of a good number of those titles, including but not limited to Crysis 2/3, BattleField 3 and SimCity.
Here is the official statement: http://investor.ea.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=749234
Even if you base the article on the above source alone, you could have mentioned the part where press release talks about the "Business Outlook".
Here you can find the letter he sent to EA: http://kotaku.com/5991181/ea-ceo-john-riccitiello-steps-down
In that letter he makes everything that was already in the "Business Outlook" section of the press release clear. In essence, EA has been losing money for a long time and he takes accountability for that:
I remember playing D&D Forgotten realms on my 386. DRM at the time consisted of: Turn to page 17 of the manual and type the 4th word in the second paragraph.... Thank you for choosing our product.