Chris Avellone leaves Obsidian

There is often times a difference between what happened, and what you can prove in court.

This is how the legal system works. Saying that they were “proven false” isn’t true. They made a statement as part of a settlement agreement, there was no court case judgement proving anything. If anything, based on the statement, the accusers say that they were misinterpreted:

We wanted to support women in the industry. In so doing, our words have been misinterpreted to suggest specific allegations of misconduct that were neither expressed nor intended.

So, they never meant to directly accuse him anyway? Which seems pretty contrary to the statements that were made.

It is an entire mess, and this is over because the 2 people who he sued saw settlement which required their statement as the best option to end this lawsuit, not because “allegations were proven false”.

Due to how the law works, innocent until proven guilty, they couldn’t be proven true.

And yes, either the two women lied from the start or they were forced to say they lied in the settlement. We have no way to tell either way, but the burden of proof on defamation is pretty darn high.

He was thinking with his dick and foolishly hooked up with random fans then they got upset for whatever reason and tried to destroy him in retaliation. Chris was definitely a dumbass and made the wrong decision, but that isn’t abuse, it’s risk-taking. That’s my read on the matter.

Yes, this. It’s quite possible they just ran out of money before he did, though as @Noman points out he probably had the tougher legal hill to climb. “But why would they issue that statement if he weren’t innocent?” Well, the same reason tons of people plead guilty to crimes they didn’t commit.

Probably the better way of wording it.

Again though, that means he’s innocent.

I mean, having said that, I realize that’s not necessarily true… Like, OJ was acquitted, and he probably killed those folks.

But there must be some line where just having someone say bad things about you, which they can’t back up, shouldn’t destroy your reputation.

Blame the companies that dropped him at the faintest whiff of controversy. You have to love corporate HR culture.

My only input is that half of a 7-figure payment would be almost life-destroying to me, (and I don’t think the accusers were rich) so there’d be no way I’d agree to that unless my lawyer told me that the guaranteed outcome of an actual court judgment would be a heckuva lot worse.

I saw somewhere that there isn’t a payout - it was something Chris talked about on his blog but wasn’t actually part of the settlement. I’m trying to find the tweet that mentioned that. EDIT: I think the idea is that in cases like this it’s common for both sides to have to pay a big figure payout, like for example “Chris owes 7 digits to them, they owe him 7 digits back plus the cost of his attorney fees” and of course, that half of the settlement wouldn’t have been mentioned by Chris on his blog. So we really don’t know the details. They DID have to pay his lawyer fees though, for sure.

But also while looking for this I found (one of) the tweet(s) that people were pointing to a few years ago when this all started up, to show that he is just kind of a bad actor maybe in general.

There’s enough private messages and the like to make anyone employing him uncomfortable in the sense of “a few drinks and this dude can blow up my project”.

Not criminal, but enough to make him not a good fit for most projects.

Like I said, there are a plethora of examples that don’t look good for Chris. Whether those are enough to prove that true in court is something else.

Also, the details of the settlement are also probably a bit confidential, so the “7 figure payout” might be more complicated than it looks on its face.

I would just note that “innocent until proven guilty” is a standard in criminal, not civil court and Avellone was never involved in a criminal case, so it’s not really applicable to what’s going on here except in the sense that we might as individuals strive to think that way.

Just as a reminder, the Me-Too related allegations were kind of a side-distraction in this thread. Though a long one. Remember what was being said about Chris in 2018 in this thread.

Totally forgot about that. Bad-mouthing former colleagues in public is unacceptably unprofessional.

The late night text thing, followed next morning by an apology, sounds more like he was drunk off his ass. The man is 50 years old, exercise some self-control.

That text message, assuming that was with a work colleague, is entirely unacceptable. Way, way over the line.

I don’t know who that refers to. What is “the nazi RPG forum”? That taken care of, what exactly is meant by “buddy-buddy with”? What has he said/done with/about whom?

Well, it is possible, but even though the anti-SLAPP judgement against Avellone included legal fees, Barrows’s (and Bristol’s?) lawyer was apparently working pro-bono (it seems in cases like these even pro-bono attorneys can potentially reap fees as part of a judgement).

This has only become a thing that happens in recent years, though, and it’s only started happening because of rampaging guilty-even-if-probably-innocent (mostly-)twitter mobs, so I’ll continue to blame people who seemingly salivate at any chance to trash people’s lives and careers online.

See the text conversation above. I forget if that was a coworker or a fan he was talking to, but it doesn’t matter. Don’t treat women that way.

You’re probably right, but it’s a shame that the lesson has be learned by the women who had to deal with this chowderhead.

RPG Codex, where he spilled plenty of (very unprofessional) ink about his leaving Obsidian. The original purpose of this thread as Rock8Man pointed out before these allegations came up and it became that thread. First… 250 or so posts.

Most RPG developers have a representative who posts at RPG Codex or is otherwise associated with them (giving interviews etc.). Owlcat, Obsidian, and inXile to name a few. People from Bioware and Bethesda stopped posting there a long time ago, but they are pretty much the exception.

AFAIK none of the women involved in this are coworkers. The recipient of the “third-wheeling exit strategy” message is the head of PR at Riot.

Avellone hasn’t posted on RPGCodex in years. Not that if he had, he would be in any way responsible for what some other morons post there. Guilt by association is nonsense.