John Riccitiello of Unity and Alexia Bonatsos of Dream Ventures.
John Riccitiello of Unity and Alexia Bonatsos of Dream Ventures.
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John Riccitiello Q&A: How Unity CEO views Epic’s Fortnite success

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 12 min

Years ago, Epic Games pitched a little game called Fortnite to then-Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello. Not so prophetically, he turned it down. Fortnite went on to be the world’s most popular battle royale game, and Riccitiello went on to lead game engine maker Unity Technologies, the arch rival of Epic, which also makes the competing Unreal Engine.

Of course, you can’t fault Riccitiello, as the old Fortnite wasn’t a battle royale game and it honestly did not look so good early on. But fate has a funny way of working things out. Tim Sweeney, CEO of Epic Game, recently said that Fortnite is an example of how Epic Games’ has a model that works. The company makes its own games, and it uses the earnings to help improve its game engine.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.