It's official. John Riccitiello (a difficult name to write) has decided to jump ship. On March 30th, he'll officially be leaving the company. Until his replacement is found, Larry Probst has been named as the temporal replacement by the Executive Board.

This is John's second time leaving the company; his stint between 1997 to 2004 was arguable the greatest years of EA, giving us some classic games and rising to become one of the greatest publishers. He left to start his own equity firm, but eventually came back in 2007.

It's likely this is caused by several things that you may or may not have heard about EA in the past few year:

• EA being named "Worst Company in America"
  
• EA losing its place on the NASDAQ-100 (with share prices going from $60 right down to $20 over Riccitiello's second CEO period)
  
• Star Wars: The Old Republic (particularly making an MMO out of a single player RPG and the entire move to F2P)
  
• Mass Effect 3 (particularly how it handled PR over the ending and DLC)
  
• SimCity (except a report on that sooner or later)
  

So, now we play the waiting game to see if a new CEO will rise who knows what they're doing. I certainly hope so. EA has a long way to climb to get back to the top.

Sources:

http://www.ea.com/news/from-john

http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2013/03/18/as-simcity-fires-burn-john-riccitello-steps-down-as-ea-ceo/

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/122761-EA-CEO-John-Riccitiello-Resigns-UPDATED