Aleck
2694
While I agree that there was almost certainly no risk, do you not see the difference between:
and
Again, while I agree that there was likely little or no risk to Newell – and that there may be more risk to him today as a result of taking this game off Steam – language does matter. In this case, the difference between making a threat (which he actualy did) and expressing your anger (your strawman).
It’s pretty easy for us, Mr. and Ms. Disinterested Observers, to blow it off, but how does anyone know that he’s just joking from a Twitter post?
Someday people are gonna learn about bare text and lack of context…apparently not today though.
It’s good that he’s taking a hard look at himself.
My temper and tendency to use twitter to vent has been a consistent problem since I entered the games industry, and I just can’t do it. I don’t have the willpower necessary to be the “face” of a company. If I do continue to work in games it’ll be as an anonymous 1 of 1000 at some shitty corporation, not the most public figure of a single digit sized team.
Unfortunately, he’s still in a bit of victim mode with his “some shitty corporation” bit. He needs to get a handle on his temper and realize that social media is not a private conversation or a diary to vent into. I have a feeling a lot of millenials will learn this the hard way.
I give him full credit for owning it and quickly trying to mitigate the damage (too late, alas.) But yeah, even his apology shows he needs to find some other outlet for his frustration than public posting.
Had he done that as an identifiable employee of a game studio that published through Steam (i.e. “an anonymous 1 of 1000 at some shitty corporation”), he’d likely have been fired.
Side by side one of them look more menacing than the other, but from the context his rant was posted in I processed them as if they were one and the same.
Regarding Dale North leaving Destructoid, ex-reporter Allistair Pinsof gives his story:
http://pastebin.com/nnR5gqdX
I realize I could have done some things better, but I also realize that it was a lack of ethics among staff and the industry that led me to my decision and showed me to the door after. I wish I could tell the truth, do right by readers, and still have a job. But, as outlets currently stand, it’s not that easy. Managing editors of sites are all too happy to abuse their power.
Razgon
2702
Please stop defending him - What he did was wrong, period. As others have stated a lot of people will come to this rude awakening, that words matter. Its an issue that many, many people have these days, and are clearly without any kind of understanding that people can take offense of their words, because they are “a joke”, “sarcasm”, “I clearly didn’t mean it”. Well, don’t say it then in a public forum where you can be misunderstood.
Personally, I think its sad that the digital evolution has come faster than the digital etiquette has been able to follow.
Edit: This was to Instant.
Regarding Paranautical, TotalBiscuit makes an ironic statement:
I believe that they have been fairly punished in this instance. You cannot act that way in public. Twitter is not a place where you can just shout into the void. You are shouting publicly to an audience of people who has the ability so spread what you say to thousands in a heartbeat. You can put in all the disclaimers you want but the reality is that when you tweet you represent your company in some capacity and there are real consequences to that.
Words may matter but the intent of the person delivering them and the context they are delivered in should also be considered.
Personally I think it is sad that people find offence in everything. Everywhere people are screaming “Oh, I am offended, protect me, punish the offenders!” or overreacting in other ways. Like how someones untimely joke on an airplane about Ebola after a bit of coughing causes a huge uproar and evacuation. I think it is a societal issue “over there” that hopefully hasn’t spread to these shores yet.
“Destroying” some peoples livelihood over a innocent rant (that was since removed), over twitter - which is a shitty place to begin with - is wrong - even if they as company can pretty much do whatever they like.
CraigM
2705
whistle That’s pretty damning… if true. Honestly I’m not aware enough of the initial kerfuffle to even begin to parse it. Where lies the truth in that situation? I have no idea, but the ‘Neiro’ guy seems pretty shady no matter how you shake it.
The context is that this is an immature person that by his own admission does not have the “willpower necessary” to not be an idiot on social media. Personally, I wouldn’t want to be in a business partnership with someone that clearly isn’t ready to handle being professional. That said, by Valve’s email to him, they’re more willing to tolerate this stuff than I. Apparently, their dev partners can say whatever they want about the service upon which they depend as long as it doesn’t edge into death threats.
As for your last bit, I disagree that there’s ever an “innocent rant”. A rant is a bald instance of losing self-control. Normally, that’s not a deal-breaker, but a death threat - even a jest? Come on.
This isn’t a case of someone being offended. This is a case where the dev thinks it’s appropriate to casually threaten death on Twitter to a business partner over a minor inconvenience that probably could have been handled with a phone call.
It’s the casual use of threats of violence when things don’t go your way that Valve appears to be trying to nip in the bud.
sclpls
2708
Yesterday when I was walking to catch BART to go to work I saw a vagrant that was shouting at no one in particular about how he was going to rape a bunch of women for their own good, and as I passed by he asked for a dollar. Even though I didn’t take his threats seriously, and I wasn’t offended by him, I was still inclined not to give him that dollar. Something about people behaving erratically in public tends to make people not want to engage with them any further.
There’s a lot of finger-pointing with that drama. The basic sequence of events is this:
An indie game dev started an IndieGoGo campaign for “lifesaving surgery”. IndieGoGo shut down the campaign over improprieties. (It’s unclear what IndieGoGo knew at this time. They closed the campaign without comment.) Allistair Pinsof, while working for Destructoid, found out that the campaign was actually for gender reassignment surgery. The campaign starter tried to commit suicide over IndieGoGo closing the campaign. Pinsof wanted to run a story outing the fact that it was for gender reassignment because he felt it was a scam.
At this point, things get muddy. Pinsof maintains that he kept his superiors informed of his intent and didn’t get an outright “we forbid you to run this” message. They say they told him to not run it due to legal concerns if the dev succeeded with suicide.
Pinsof went ahead with Tweeting his story out. He was fired.
Things get muddy again. Pinsof says the “corrupt” management of Destructoid hung him out to dry and canned him over the gender issue and collusion on the GameJournoPros board. They say he was insubordinate and disobeyed a direct order to squash the story.
Fast forward to now and Dale North leaves Destructoid and Pinsof torpedoes his chances at getting hired by any of the other big sites.
Part of Pinsof’s argument is that he’s already been blacklisted via the Super Secret Gaming Journalism EIC Listserv of Doom ™, so really, at this point, (in his mind) anything else he says won’t hurt or help further. I seem to recall it was actually North who wrote the comment that Pinsof claims started his blacklisting, but it could have been Neiro, too. Hard to keep it all straight w/ all the spooky blacked-out email screencaps and Fawkes-masked neckbeards crying about being called autists by feminists and/or Fullbright Games on Twitter, to be honest.
I get that, but Pinsof needs to realize (along with Maulbeck and a lot of people) this kind of shit follows you on the internet forever. Any prospective employer, even one not involved in writing, is going to Google his name and see this. It’s not flattering regardless of his sense of righteousness.
CraigM
2712
Ah, that is a very different spin, and quite frankly a more coherent telling than his rant. Honestly I was having a hard time tracking the ‘corruption’ bit, about the only thing that made complete sense in the post was shady circumstances around the firing.
Still I don’t know what to make of the whole thing. Nobody comes off particularly good in the telling of that story, either version. Thanks for clarification.
In the abstract we could argue about what you should and shouldn’t be allowed to say to who (I don’t actually want to, let’s not), but in this specific incident, there is nothing even a little bit wrong with Valve’s actions. They didn’t file charges, they didn’t seek to punish him, they said they don’t want to work with him because he crossed the line into a personal attack. Even if it was pretty clear it was likely just a public temper tantrum and not an actual threat of murder, I totally support Valve deciding that’s not the kind of person they want a business relationship with. That the stakes were high for Maulbeck’s company doesn’t give him a pass or entitle him to any more or less leniency.
Honestly, the way everything so far has been handled, Valve gave a very measured, un-emotional response that even leaves them room to decide to work with Maulbeck again later if they decide to revisit the issue in light of his apology. I can’t find fault with anything Valve did here.
