Criterion Co-Founder Lau-Kee To Lead Unity Tech Board

Copenhagen, Denmark-based 3D game development tool provider Unity Technologies appointed David Lau-Kee as its non-executive chairman to advise the company on its strategy and global growth. Previously, Lau-Kee was the co-founder, president, and CEO of Criterion Software Group, the UK-based middleware studio behind the Renderware engine used in the Burnout series and several Grand Theft Auto games. He was also vice president at Electronic Arts and held several high-level positions at Canon Europe before EA acquired the company in 2004, and now will lead the Unity Technologies Board of Directors. Founded in 2003, Unity provides game development tools such as its Unity editor, which can be used in games for the PC, Mac, Wii, and iPhone platforms. The company launched support for the latter two platforms in 2008 and also tripled its userbase. The developer more than doubled its staff in the past year as a result. While the editor is currently only available for Mac, Unity intends to release a Windows port in 2009. "The last several years has brought a plethora of entrants into the video game tools & middleware sector, but Unity is the only company I have found that has the technology, the people and the strategy to be truly transformational," says David Lau-Kee. He continues, "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 democratization of the games industry has begun."