Unity finds itself in increasingly hot water following its controversial runtime fee announcement. Developers' sentiment has drastically shifted against Unity. However, recent developments suggest Unity's executives were bracing for the backlash.
According to an earlier report by Guru Focus, the top Unity officials sold multiple shares days before the official runtime fee announcement. John Riccitiello, president and CEO of Unity Software Inc., sold 2,000 shares (each share sold for $40) on September 6, which is just six days before the runtime fee announcement by Unity. What's interesting is that Riccitiello has sold 50,610 shares over the past year while buying NONE. This trend doesn't leave a good impression.
Interestingly, the CEO wasn't the only one who sold his shares, as other board of directors and top executives have also sold their shares, according to NASDAQ. This indicates that insiders with deep knowledge of the company operations are divesting, hinting at concerns about its future.
Tomer Bar-Zeev, CEO of IronSource and president of Grow, offloaded 37,500 shares on September 1 at $37.45 per share. Meanwhile, Shlomo Dovrat, co-founder of Viola Ventures and a Unity board member, made a substantial sale on August 30, parting with 68,454 shares at $37.64 each, amounting to approximately $2.58 million in shares.