Unity announced the change of leadership in a recent press release, specifying that John Riccitiello is leaving his post "immediately".
The role of interim CEO will be assumed by James M. Whitehurst, who was also the president of IBM and led its "daughter" Red Hat.
Roelof Botha, a partner of the Sequoia Capital venture fund, will replace Riccitello as chairman of the Board of Directors.
Unity does not directly name the reason for Riccitello's departure, but obviously the management reshuffle is related to the scandal around the Runtime Fee — a new pricing policy initially based on installation fees and caused anger in the developer community.
John Riccitello has worked as CEO of Unity since October 2014. In the gaming industry, he is also known as the former head of Electronic Arts (from 1998 to 2004 and 2007 to 2013).