The Great Video Game Business and Financial (In)Stability Thread

So… I have it on good faith that this does not describe the Diablo team. They are Team 3 I believe. That said, I have no specific info about any of the other Blizzard teams or Activision.

This is more hearsay than evidence but I spoke with someone who worked for Activision once. This was a looong time ago. Perhaps 20 years back. I asked him how it was and he said it sucked ass and that everyone there is a jerk.

Protesting a game company by...playing its game.

That's a weird flex, bro.

Idiots.

Must we sh*t on everything? If they're bringing visibility to others in-game what's the harm?

I know, I know, cancel your account.

The article made it sound like most of them had prepaid accounts and were just running out the clock on what they'd already paid for.

Blind_Evil wrote:

Last year, not month. June 2020 if I remember correctly.

Oops, right, last year, time became hard to follow last year for some reason.

Maybe I’m just cynical, but I’m not sure I find a defense mounted by a very recently hired former Torture Advocate/Apologist all that believable. https://twitter.com/Megan_Nicolett/s...

So, uh, the Blizzard thing continues getting worse. Now we have a "Cosby Suite."

The “Cosby Suite” was mentioned in the State of California document but, yeah, the Kotaku article makes it even worse. To me, it had kind of sounded like an awful nickname tossed around, but it was clearly more than that. Something celebrated.

J Allan Brack out at Blizzard.

This is after a "tone deaf" letter response from Activision, followed up by a slightly less tone deaf letter from Kotick which preceded a planned walkout by (a large chunk of) employees.

Brack will likely go down as having the worst run as head of Blizzard. He's only been in charge since 2018 and it's been nothing but a string of controversies since he was in charge, whether they were his fault or not.

So all it took was a bit of compromat for him to get promoted way past his level of incompetency?

I so want to know the true reason Mike Morhaime left Blizzard. Back then I thought he left because Activision was assuming control, and he felt it wasn't his Blizzard anymore.
But now, maybe he left because he was trying to avoid getting caught, whenever the truth came out, about how much of a ****show Blizzard had been under his leadership.
Whatever the reason, he sure managed to get out at the right time.

RawkGWJ wrote:

So all it took was a bit of compromat for him to get promoted way past his level of incompetency?

I mean, WoW has been quite possibly their greatest financial success story. Whether that happened because or in spite of him, I'm not at all surprised if they overlooked all kinds of sh*tty behavior for anyone whose name was attached to that cash cow

hbi2k wrote:
RawkGWJ wrote:

So all it took was a bit of compromat for him to get promoted way past his level of incompetency?

I mean, WoW has been quite possibly their greatest financial success story. Whether that happened because or in spite of him, I'm not at all surprised if they overlooked all kinds of sh*tty behavior for anyone whose name was attached to that cash cow

That's exactly what's been happening. Folks created one of the most successful and lucrative games of all time and were insulated by it and the frat-like culture of the industry.

Shadout wrote:

I so want to know the true reason Mike Morhaime left Blizzard. Back then I thought he left because Activision was assuming control, and he felt it wasn't his Blizzard anymore.
But now, maybe he left because he was trying to avoid getting caught, whenever the truth came out, about how much of a ****show Blizzard had been under his leadership.
Whatever the reason, he sure managed to get out at the right time.

A ton of Blizzard folks have left and Activision has been fingered as the culprit, but those were assumptions. Perhaps it was nowhere near as simple as that.

Apparently Fullbright, makers of Gone Home and Tacoma, has had a toxic work environment for years due to Steve Gaynor's personality and management methods. Not sexual harassment or abuse allegations, but a string of women have left the company over the years and their upcoming game Open Roads is delayed due to the number of people leaving the company. At this point he's been demoted to a writer position, but I'm not sure why he hasn't left completely. I was also under the impression he was an original founder, so that may have something to do with it. Annapurna is acting as a buffer between the rest of the employees and Gaynor at this point. Even if Open Roads comes out, I don't see Fullbright surviving much longer.

That's exactly what's been happening. Folks created one of the most successful and lucrative games of all time and were insulated by it and the frat-like culture of the industry.

There are the nth degree of this. This is widespread in game companies with far less success. Fratboy culture is almost a core trait of video games companies from the start that it hasn't been able to grow out of.

The games industry started off as a microcosm of the worst kinds of nepotism, corruption and authoritarianism in American corporate culture.

beanman101283 wrote:

At this point [Fullbright co-founder and former creative lead Steve Gaynor] been demoted to a writer position, but I'm not sure why he hasn't left completely.

If he has an ownership stake in the company, he might be hard to get rid of completely. From what I can see they're a small LLC. In a perfect world, they would have an operating agreement that says exactly what happens to a founder's ownership stake when they leave the company and under what circumstances. In the one in which we live, a lot of founders of startups put that job off until another day... until one of them wants to leave (or the others want them to leave) and then it becomes a very acrimonious process involving a lot of lawyers.

Giving him a token salary and job description and shoving him in an office somewhere where he reports directly to the other founders and never interacts with anyone else might seem to them like the best way to avoid that.

hbi2k wrote:
beanman101283 wrote:

At this point [Fullbright co-founder and former creative lead Steve Gaynor] been demoted to a writer position, but I'm not sure why he hasn't left completely.

If he has an ownership stake in the company, he might be hard to get rid of completely. From what I can see they're a small LLC. In a perfect world, they would have an operating agreement that says exactly what happens to a founder's ownership stake when they leave the company and under what circumstances. In the one in which we live, a lot of founders of startups put that job off until another day... until one of them wants to leave (or the others want them to leave) and then it becomes a very acrimonious process involving a lot of lawyers.

Giving him a token salary and job description and shoving him in an office somewhere where he reports directly to the other founders and never interacts with anyone else might seem to them like the best way to avoid that.

I think the other founders left already, but I could be wrong there.

I get the feeling he's around contractually until this project is done and then he exits or the company folds.

garion333 wrote:

I think the other founders left already, but I could be wrong there.

I get the feeling he's around contractually until this project is done and then he exits or the company folds.

According to their Wikipedia page, of the three founders, Johnnemann Nordhagen left to found Dim Bulb Games. If the third founder, Karla Zimonja, left, it doesn't say anything about it.

Of course, "founder" doesn't necessarily correlate perfectly with "owner," so who knows.

In any case, it's probably either a contractual thing or having to do with ownership status or both. Reading through the couple of articles that have been linked here, it sounds like the guy is an asshole and a bad manager, but "being an asshole" doesn't rise to the level that tends to be necessary to prematurely sever a contract.

Karla announced a week or so ago she was founding a new studio, Ivy Road.

hbi2k wrote:

In any case, it's probably either a contractual thing or having to do with ownership status or both. Reading through the couple of articles that have been linked here, it sounds like the guy is an asshole and a bad manager, but "being an asshole" doesn't rise to the level that tends to be necessary to prematurely sever a contract.

If that level of asshole-ry prevents the game from being finished it could, right?

15 employees left, 12 cited his behavior as being at least partly responsible, and at least 10 of those employees were women.

Now they have 6 employees left and despite what Gaynor's claimed, they probably can't finish on time.

The behavior in the Polygon piece alone rises above just being an asshole and bad manager, imo. But maybe you're right and that's still not enough to break a contract.

hbi2k wrote:

it sounds like the guy is an asshole and a bad manager, but "being an asshole" doesn't rise to the level that tends to be necessary to prematurely sever a contract.

Depends. Twenty years ago, shouting and cursing at your colleagues was mostly tolerated, especially if the person doing the shouting was in a leadership position. These days that type of behavior is considered to be workplace harassment.

All of the articles very specifically say that no one is accusing him of sexual harassment. Everyone involved seems to be being very careful to be clear that they're not accusing him of a crime, just being a sh*thead. And it tends to take criminal conduct to void a contract, unless that contract specifically has a clause allowing it to be voided.

Focus Home has acquired Dotemu.

Embracer has acquired *deep breath* 3D Realms, CrazyLabs, DigixArt, Easy Trigger, Force Field, Ghost Ship Games, Grimfrost, and Slipgate Ironworks. Not all of them are game companies, but I included them for posterity.

Wow!

This company handles most game's payment systems. Especially in the East and EU

and double wow!

CEO's response to the outrage this caused...

The message can be translated as “Work your f…ing ass off or get your f…ing ass out” (as suggested by Twitter user Totolitotoro, which we think is a pretty close rendition).

A good breakdown of the craziness

Not to sound pedantic but "handles most game's payment systems" implies xsolla is involved in most payment transactions which isn't accurate. They are a leader in alternative payment systems particularly in eastern european CIS countries where many people don't have standard bank issued debit/credit cards. I have no idea what % of transactions that represents, but I would guess its an insignificant amount globally and maybe even less than a majority for Russia and other CIS countries.

They've also tried to help publish or fund games, particulalrly for those markets.

None of this diminishes the gravity of the situation, but rest assured if you are buying something in steam or epic in the US or most of anywhere else in the world, you are not using xsolla.

MechWarrior Online offers XSolla as one of a few payment options. I don't think I've encountered it anywhere else.

Courtesy quote of the translated text of the email that the fire employees got (the original is in Russian):

You received this email because my big data team analyzed your activities in Jira, Confluence, Gmail, chats, documents, dashboards and tagged you as unengaged and unproductive employees. In other words, you were not always present at the workplace when you worked remotely.

Many of you might be shocked, but I truly believe that Xsolla is not for you. Nadia and her care team partnered with seven leading HR agencies, as we will help you find a good place, where you will earn more and work even less. Sasha will help you get a recommendation, including the one from myself. And Natalia will read you your rights.

Once again, thank you for your contribution. If you want to stay in contact with me, please write me a long letter about all your observations, injustice, and gratitude.

Wow. That is a letter written by someone who firmly believes that fear is the best motivator. That's not just someone expressing himself poorly. Everything about that is designed to instill terror.

Yep. It’s called Power Over leadership. Working at UPS, I’ve dealt with this bullsh*t for my entire adult life. I’ve been at UPS 29 years.

Being someone who values intellectualism, at some point many many years ago I decided to go on a quest to understand why UPS management behaves in such an abhorrent way. Along my quest I first taught myself how to engage with these assholes in a healthy way. (Healthy for myself not them)

Only recently have I found a detailed explanation of power over leadership. Dr Berne Brown, my unofficial spiritual mentor, outlines power over leadership in her book Dare to Lead. TLDR: It’s a mostly ineffective and inefficient style of leadership which utilizes overt intimidation as a means of motivating employees. It has some very negative downstream effects as well. It creates a work culture rife with dishonesty and harassment in all its forms. It also kills creativity, which is ironic since it’s the leadership style utilized in many of the largest video game companies.

The power over leadership style used by UPS has had a profoundly negative effect on my life. I hate it with all my heart.