Chris Avellone leaves Obsidian

Still, that’s an insane thing to say to really ANYONE you aren’t already in a sexual relationship with. No way that’s something to say to a professional colleague.

That indeed is a very creepy and cringeworthy response.

While they weren’t in sexual relationship, it didn’t come completely out of the blue, they interacted before, apparently she called him her “boyfriend in another life” etc

Regardless, he apologized immediately. Drunken sext is bad, yes.

It’s so cringe

It’s bad AND it’s a valid reason to refuse to put him back in a position where he could do something like it again. I’d much rather protect my women colleagues than his privileged career.

I don’t find myself agreeing with Desslock very often, but in this case I certainly agree that it appears that there is some muddying of the waters going on by some people in this thread.

Chris Avellone filed a libel suit against two women who accused him of very bad things. They ended up settling that lawsuit for 7 figures and put out a statement that he never did those bad things they accused him of.

Libel is very hard to prove. Per Cornell Law School:

To prove prima facie defamation, a plaintiff must show four things: 1) a false statement purporting to be fact; 2) publication or communication of that statement to a third person; 3) fault amounting to at least negligence; and 4) damages, or some harm caused to the reputation of the person or entity who is the subject of the statement.

And given how hard it is to prove libel, I would imagine not many people on the receiving end of a libel lawsuit would decide to settle for 7 figures if they are not worried that they are going to lose the suit. This isn’t one of those “it’s cheaper just to settle and move on with our lives” kind of things.

I don’t think there’s any lack of clarity here. These women wronged him and damaged his reputation in the process. He may be gross when it comes to his interactions with women, but that doesn’t warrant the accusations leveled at him.

I can’t speak to any of the other issues he has. But the folks who are suggesting that it’s not clear who won what or what really happened here are, I think, being disingenuous.

For my part, I wasn’t being disingenuous, it was literally just not clear to me. IANAL and haven’t been involved in any sort of legal settlement, so I wasn’t really sure how to parse the description of this one.

In that context, how does it typically work in a situation like this? $1M+ just doesn’t seem like the kind of money most people have access to. So what happens if someone settles for an amount they don’t have? Does the other party get to garner wages, put a lien on property, and that sort of thing until the settlement agreement is fulfilled?

That’s where I was coming from when I read the statement. My initial read was that he had paid the money but that was based on an assumption in my head that he was the likely party to have access to that kind of money. You know what they say about assumptions, but that’s where the statement wasn’t clear to me.

We’d definitely need a lawyer in here to answer that one. I think it’s the case when you lose a lawsuit, but that’s when there’s a government agency that has the power to do those things. I don’t know what happens when a private party settles with another private party for a monetary amount he/she doesn’t actually have. I imagine there’s some sort of payment agreement (i.e. pay $x per year for y years) in that case. Whatever the situation is, Avellone must be OK with it, or he wouldn’t have agreed to the settlement.

I thought it was clear it was a favorable settlement at first, but then it started to seem like you could read the statement a few different ways and I became confused. Genuinely confused. Wasn’t trying to be disingenuous.

It makes sense that any settlement of a libel suit means there was a decent case. Judges do dismiss libel suits quickly, most of the time.

Oh no, he definitely won the case. That was (past tense, so far as I’m concerned) Avellone issue #1. Non-issue to me except in that it showed poor judgement.

Separate issue #2, does sending a stupid drunk sext followed by an immediate apology justify blackballing him? That’s up to personal opinion. I say no, but it does evidence more poor judgement.

Third issue with this surprisingly eventful man’s life has to do with publicly badmouthing his former coworkers and naming names, and that’s a different story. I wouldn’t hire anyone who do that unless it’s disclosing an abusive or even dangerous scenario and a whistleblower type thing, which this wasn’t. Not only is it unprofessional-- it’s not worth the risk.

Honestly @stusser’s #2 is enough for me to award him the title “sex pest” (I can’t imagine sending something like that, and I’ve been pretty damn drunk, too), and that together with #3 would make me wonder about someone who hires him.

FWIW, a number of lawyers I follow on Twitter that have written about the settlement are skeptical it really says what most are assuming it is.

There isn’t anymore, but the early information was really hard to parse. I don’t think anyone here was trying to muddy the waters, it’s just that based on the early reporting we genuinely didn’t know what had happened. Now we do.

Edit: Or at least I thought we did, but I just saw @eduardoleonidas’s post so I’m going back to my “I’m staying out of this until the smoke clears” stance.

Reading that thread, I get the distinct impression that Doucette is a total asshole.

There is no “seven figure payment,” just a comment on a blog claiming one

I’m sorry you’re this naive

In other news, today I received a seven figure payment from Chris Avellone as restitution for his moronic fans

I have a court record showing the lawsuit was already dismissed You have… a blog post Believe what you want, no one else cares 😘

One of those “double down to not admit being wrong and make myself even bigger idiot in the process” types.

I have a hard time believing anyone on Twitter with 100,000 followers could ever be an asshole.

Yes, this is something that definitely happens, may be the case for this settlement, which also probably says that you cannot comment on the settlement past the statement that both sides agreed on. Unless something is leaked, we probably will never know.

Since libel is incredibly difficult to prosecute in the US, and the settlement number is so high, I have to imagine the “7 figures” is much more complicated than that. This is probably why a specific amount is not stated, and both sides seem to be agreeing that both sides were doing the right thing, in a way. That settlement statement is extremely odd, when you have a 7 figure payment going somewhere, where the people paying that 7 figures say that they did nothing wrong, and it was all a misunderstanding.

I mean, couldn’t they have just sent him 7 action figures, and it be true as well?

image

I almost spit my nonexistent drink reading that!

Bro, if you think I’m gonna say Musk isn’t a grade A mega-asshole, please think again.

Next thing you’ll tell me that someone who has tweeted on average every half hour on the half hour for the last thirteen years might possibly be an asshole!

Before anyone counters with the obvious, yes, someone who digs up and runs these numbers could just possibly be an asshole, too.

Maybe the seven figure settlement is more symbolic than anything else. Perhaps he knows they can’t pay it but he demanded that amount for public relations purposes.