Peter Moore lashes out at Riccitiello detractors

EA COO and games industry veteran Peter Moore has stepped up to defend former-colleague John Riccitello from what he has labelled as “smug” attacks.

Yesterday it was announced that EA stalwart Riccitello will be stepping down as CEO of the mega-publisher by the end of this month, with some media outlets grasping the opportunity to poke fun and celebrate.

In particular, Kotaku's recent articles caught the ire of the COO, who took to his twitter account to strike back.

"Kotaku reveling in what, due to their self-smugness, they don't realise is a sad day for our industry, which is the platform on which they actually make money,” he commented (via GamesIndustry.biz).

“John not only helped propel our company and interactive entertainment into new experiences, thus enticing millions of new people to become 'gamers', his work leading the ESA in recent years has helped ensure that we don't experience the fate of the music industry,"

He reiterated his statement that it was a “sad day” for the industry and for those who personally worked with Riccitello.

James Lee

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James Lee is a freelance writer and analyst with extensive experience in the technology, media and games sectors. For the past few years he has provided content for internationally published industry reports, SEO companies and a variety of news-focused websites. Prior to this, James was responsible for covering news and producing in-depth features for GamesIndustry.biz while occasionally contributing to its sister-site. Eurogamer.net. In addition to this he has contributed to other notable sites such as CVG.co.uk, Edge-Online and DigitalSpy.