Lau-Kee lands at Unity

After a year’s sabbatical former Criterion president and CEO David Lau-Kee has returned to games development, taking up a key non-exec chairman role at Unity Technologies.

The man who invented Renderware will lead the firm, loved by developers for its low-cost game engine, through ‘rapid, global growth’.

Lau-Kee will ‘advise on strategy, growth, and share his industry connections’ as Unity continues its expansion. (For more details on his appointment, you can also check out our Q&A with him.)

Unity’s eponymous editor software has garnered much respect for its ability to deliver content easily through the web. And after successful introductions of its technology for Mac and iPhone, a Windows version of the engine is on the way later this year.

He brings 15 years of experience to the company, having been co-founder of Criterion Software group and latterly VP at EA after the studio and its Renderware technology were acquired in 2004.

It was Lau-Kee’s research in the early 1990s which lead to the invention of Renderware, which soon became the most popular middleware offering during the previous generation of consoles.

Lau-Kee commented: “The last several years has brought a plethora of entrants into the video game tools and middleware sector, but Unity is the only company I have found that has the technology, the people and the strategy to be truly transformational.

"Our community loves our Mac-based development platform, and we confirmed and demonstrated Unity for Windows at the yearly Unity developer conference in October. Mark my words, the democratisation of the games industry has begun.”

David Helgason, CEO of Unity Technologies added: “In 2008, Unity grew over 200 per cent, and with the release of the Windows port of Unity we expect to accelerate our growth in 2009. The reason for our success is simple: we concentrate on bringing productive and intuitive tools to our broad creative user base, with a care and passion bordering on fanaticism. We love what we do, and it shows in our products.”

Click here to read our Q&A with Lau-Keen for more details on why he has joined the technology firm