Chris Avellone leaves Obsidian

I don’t know! It feels significant that we are taking the unproven word of one of the two parties to the settlement without any other sources, but sure, maybe it isn’t.

What is the lie you are speaking of?

And yes, confidentiality statements cover a ton of lying in the legal world. Lying isn’t illegal, unless it is done in certain circumstances, like to the FBI, or investors etc.

Scrub the record of everything involving the libel suit and it’s still evident that he’s a risk that’s not worth taking when weighed with the peace of mind of his coworkers. Why should they have to worry about the possibility of getting texts about cunnilingus from him, or having him get gropey at a convention? None of this is ordinary, excusable, or worth tolerating. He’s spent decades destroying his own reputation.

As far as we know he sent one text to a woman who flirted with him beforehand, and he apologized immediately afterwards. And his “being gropey at a convention” was a lie by Bristol that was also retracted.
He spent decades building his reputation, to get it destroyed by couple of lies and press eager to report and even make up new lies (like the article on “thegamer.com” where they claim “he drugged and raped countless women”).

Of course there are still holdouts that believe the women who had to retract their statements…in this very thread it appears!

Of course they had to retract them based on the settlement agreement, that isn’t in question. The question is whether they were lying the whole time. All we have is their statement and based on that, the answer is “yeah, probably”. But not definitively.

He was doing a pretty good job destroying it on his own before the allegations came up. Again, that was the initial topic of this thread!

Yeah, like…his very publically acrimonious split with Obsidian would I think be plenty to make most employers think twice about hiring him and that’s on the record. Personally I love the man’s work so I’d be happy to have a more concrete demonstration of him not being a creep but I don’t feel like this clears very much up because of the limited info and the potential nuances of how we could have ended up here. A settlement is not a win in court, it’s an agreement not to have the court fight. I think having the fight would have probably done more to clarify, But if both parties preferred this, then they get to live with it, I suppose.

From all I’ve seen, his only past action that would truly give me pause is badmouthing his former colleagues by name. I wouldn’t hire anyone who did that without a very good reason.

His other issues all have to do with poor decision-making skills, so I wouldn’t have him manage anyone, but he’s clearly a brilliant designer and those sorts of people can work out in their own bubble. But if he’s going to burn other employees, no.

I guess, there is a lot of smoke, but nobody has confirmed a fire.

Make your own judgement calls on that.

I agree this was some via-Twitters bullshit sideshow compared the main feature, which was how he left Obsidian: burning every last bridge there. But I guess this was worse for him.

Not really. Nobody cared about that. Maybe he closed his doors to work with Parker and Urqhart, who he griped about, but that’s about it. He still worked in AAA space (Jedi Fallen Order, Prey, Dying Light 2…) and indie space alike. That all ended only with Barrow’s alegations.

I’m honestly a little surprised that people are willing to overlook the horrendously awful text that was linked upthread. “They had been flirting” and “he apologized” do not in any way excuse it, IMHO. I would be very concerned bringing him onto a team. I guess we all have our different thresholds.

Avellone agreed there is no excuse for it:

…then why did he send it? Obviously he thought there was an excuse for it before hand.

…probably because he was drunk

not that that’s an excuse either

That’s better than if he hadn’t, for sure. But, to me, the crucial question is whether the comfort and peace of mind of any colleagues he would work with are worth jeopardizing by bringing him onto a team. Given their complete innocence in the situation, I don’t see how they would be. At least, that’s the calculation I would make as a hiring manager. This particular mistake was an extremely easy one to avoid.

Someone can correct me if I’m wrong, because I haven’t gone back to refamiliarize myself with all the details, but I seem to recall that Avellone spent his time with younger fans (who weren’t the litigants) in intimate situations, which, if I’m right, also doesn’t speak well of his character.

As I said before, it sounds like the legal tussle has been sorted out in a just way–I hope that’s the case. It doesn’t make the man not problematic.

People are saying, “we only have Avellone’s word on this,” but this is only a gotcha if Avellone is not telling the truth about things. So my statement, “if it’s not true wouldn’t they say something,” is only answered with, “confidentiality agreement” if such an agreement would not permit them to counter an untruth, which seems, to me, unlikely.

That is exactly how confidentiality agreements work with civil cases, it is meant to end a matter unequivocally. There is no legal requirement to tell the truth or not lie. During a settlement, which is agreed upon by both parties, they decide what the “truth” is. If there are no criminal actions being lied about, there is no legal requirement to be truthful. This is very common in civil disputes that end via settlement, where both sides can say they did nothing wrong.

This isn’t really germane. What people are disputing (in a very roundabout way) is that Avellone’s portrayal of the settlement is incorrect, not that the settlement itself is untruthful.