[Forge]

a douche nozzle is not an enema nozzle

[Zaxx]

I don't think the timing of this tweet is an accident:
https://twitter.com/...983236605120513

[Danukem]

Zaxx, on 02 May 2019 - 11:01 AM, said:

I don't think the timing of this tweet is an accident:
https://twitter.com/...983236605120513

Possibly, but I think it's more likely that JSJ was motivated by attorney general Barr misleading congress about the Mueller report:

https://www.politico...ongress-1298314

JSJ is a political guy and that would make more sense to me. I doubt he is thinking about Gearbox right now.

As for Randy Pitchford, he just needs to calm down and not respond to every criticism. Sometimes he is his own worst enemy. In the Borderlands 3 presentation, it was explicitly stated that BL3 would have micro-transactions, but they would be the same kind of cosmetic ones that we had in BL2. Nothing pay to win or any BS like that. Unfortunately at some point he tweeted that there would be none, and then went ballistic when he was called on it. He should have not tweeted that or just corrected it with "sorry meant to say they are just cosmetic" instead of blowing it up into a big controversy.

[MusicallyInspired]

Geez.

[Jimmy]

Unless you are in the business of selling your opinions such as someone like StyxHexenHammer666 or Joe Rogan or the Quartering, then operating a public social media account where you put forth those opinions is a very bad idea for business. Randy costs his company potentially thousands of dollars on a regular basis. If I was on the Gearbox board of directors I would make sure that his social media presence was stopped immediately.

[PokeThePower]

A stupidly large portion of this industry has gotten their priorities completely butt fucked upside down. They won't admit it out loud but gamers exist to please their delusional sense of importance. End the fed.

[johnnythewolf]

From David Eddings's Twitter:

Quote

I ultimately offered to do it for “free” in exchange for past royalties owed plus an apology for something I’ve never spoken about publicly until now: Randy physically assaulted me in the lobby of the Marriott Marquis at GDC 2017.

Holy shit... Now, I am seriously having second thoughts about getting Borderlands 3.

[MusicallyInspired]

Who's David Eddings and what did he offer to do for free? I don't follow Borderlands at all.

[Toxic34]

MusicallyInspired, on 07 May 2019 - 05:49 AM, said:

Who's David Eddings and what did he offer to do for free? I don't follow Borderlands at all.

Eddings was the voice of the robot character Claptrap, who is basically the mascot of the series. Randy stated earlier that he had been replaced, and put it down as "a squabble over royalty payments and salary." Basically insisting that Eddings had gotten too big for his britches and was being ungrateful. Eddings has fired back, talking about Randy's $12 million bonus, and states "I was willing to put our differences aside and do it for free, in exchange for settling the royalties issue, but Randy said no. And to top it all off, in 2017, he assaulted me!"

[Steve 64]

Im not good at grabbing Twitter Messages so I can't grab them but there is a video here showing them

[Danukem]

This video has all the details that are known, goes through the various tweets back and forth:




Eddings was an employee of Gearbox at the time that he did the voice acting for Claptrap (VP of licensing or some such). Apparently it is normal company policy for employees there to volunteer to do voicework without any additional compensation. Apparently Eddings was offered pay to reprise his role, now that he is no longer an employee. But the amount they offered him wasn't enough so he declined. The reason it wasn't enough is that Eddings did not want to work for Randy again, so it would have been a big ask. In his tweets, Eddings brought up that he was owed royalties for previous work. This goes back to one of the accusations against Randy that he took 12M of royalties that was supposed to go to all the Gearbox employees.

Eddings didn't say what the assault in the lobby consisted of, but it seems plausible that they got into an argument and then Randy shoved him. I say this because if Randy had done something that caused verifiable damage, I'll bet that Eddings would have reported it earlier. It's obvious from his tweets that Randy has a victim complex and cannot control his temper, which makes the assault accusation very believable.

[Aristotle Gumball]

I don't get why this guy acts like such a rock star. He's a fat nerd who wears funny shirts. Where do these people get the balls to be like that? He's like a less lovable, much less important John Romero.

[Danukem]

It's really hard to have sympathy or respect for people in positions of power who go on tweet storm tirades against people with much less power. Even if he doesn't care about his own reputation, he should care about the people who work for him who are hurt by this.

[johnnythewolf]

Trooper Dan, on 07 May 2019 - 11:14 AM, said:

Eddings didn't say what the assault in the lobby consisted of, but it seems plausible that they got into an argument and then Randy shoved him. I say this because if Randy had done something that caused verifiable damage, I'll bet that Eddings would have reported it earlier.

Not necessarily. You can be assaulted in a much more serious manner and still be unwilling to report it at the time, e.g. out of fear that opening up about it publicly will only make matters worse. Regardless, shoving is still assault and given Pitchford's acrimonious attitude towards Eddings, the latter's accusation is indeed perfectly believable.

In a subsequent tweet, Eddings seems to be cool with Gearbox in general, though:

Quote

Nah man -- Gearbox is full of amazingly talented game developers. It's not fair to blame the employees for the actions of one person. Be kind. They're the ones forced to cringe and bear it every time the boss shoots himself in the foot.

So to buy Borderlands 3 or not to buy Borderlands 3 when it eventually comes out on Steam, that is the question...

[Steve 64]

If you want to buy the game really up to you me on the other hand going to wait intil it free with Gold.

[johnnythewolf]

I will probably do that as well, but there is always the perennial question of whether one should separate creators (or in this case, the CEO) from their creations.

I mean, I do not know if I will ever be able to enjoy any game from Rockstar again now that it has been brought to my attention that the Houser brothers are essentially slave drivers...

[Danukem]

I will buy BL3 on console, then maybe later on steam when it's available. Speaking for myself, a creator or publisher would have to be extremely bad for me to boycott them if they have a product I really want. I'm pretty comfortable enjoying art made by people that I don't agree with or like. As I see it, I'm supporting something that has value, even if the people or process that created it are questionable. Also keep in mind that crunch time and asshole managers are probably industry norms, so if you boycott a company because of what you happen to know about it, there's lots of other companies you aren't boycotting that are just as bad.

[Jimmy]

Randy needs to step down.

[johnnythewolf]

Trooper Dan, on 07 May 2019 - 03:37 PM, said:

I will buy BL3 on console, then maybe later on steam when it's available. Speaking for myself, a creator or publisher would have to be extremely bad for me to boycott them if they have a product I really want. I'm pretty comfortable enjoying art made by people that I don't agree with or like. As I see it, I'm supporting something that has value, even if the people or process that created it are questionable. Also keep in mind that crunch time and asshole managers are probably industry norms, so if you boycott a company because of what you happen to know about it, there's lots of other companies you aren't boycotting that are just as bad.

Yeah... I did hear recently that there were a couple of studios out there that outright refused to resort to crunch, but alas their games do not appeal to me.

This whole fucking industry needs to be rebuilt from the ground up.

[Forge]

demand and supply.
the consumers were quality control, until gamergate.

[PokeThePower]

johnnythewolf, on 07 May 2019 - 02:21 PM, said:

...brought to my attention that the Houser brothers are essentially slave drivers...

No slavery in this industry and the loudest complainers could leave today and make more money and/or have better hours. Unless wait for it... they are actually so generally useless with a niche decaying skill set that the gaming industry is the only place so bloated with trivial tasks of questionable value that they could hide out in. Their false sense of entitlement sold by game dev college programs and industry out-virtue-reach programs makes it so functioning in standard entry level customer service might be a stretch.

I guarantee most if not all of those complaining to the lugenpress wouldn't accept a job outside the industry or at a developer working on a less star studded project if you could guarantee the same pay for less hours. The ones with the ability to and are GENUINELY bothered have already moved on. Don't underestimate the dopamine rush game devs get seeing their anonymous comments show up on a glorified blog post.

Game developer as a profession is a fluffy bonus option granted as a perk of a civilization with excess resources. Working on a game that millions upon millions will play and rant/rave about is a cherry on top. Matthew 26:11

A ton of people are game developers as a fashion statement and identity these days... not as a drive they would do in their spare time even if they had another job. That's ok by itself, but when they start acting like THEIR standards should be the industry standard, the rock of competition will meet the hard place of those who are willing to work harder and longer, crushing the fashionista developer's utopia sippin' "I wishes" and "I wannas".

Not unique to gaming industry compared to other over-saturated competitive creative fields... but out of all the creative fields game developers have it pretty damn great. There's a general healthy venting to each other like trench mates before getting back to it because you've remembered your other options... and then there's outright delusional entitlement.

[OpenMaw]

Let's straighten one thing in this thread up right now.

Randy Pitchford didn't make shit. The fine folks at Gearbox did. Captain Fuckface is the one that should be boycotted, not Borderlands. The people are Gearbox should not be punished for Randy's bullshit.

[Forge]

Commando Nukem, on 10 May 2019 - 09:10 PM, said:

Let's straighten one thing in this thread up right now.

Randy Pitchford didn't make shit. The fine folks at Gearbox did. Captain Fuckface is the one that should be boycotted, not Borderlands. The people are Gearbox should not be punished for Randy's bullshit.

Randy's not going anywhere until he gets caught with an under-aged girl pissing on his chest.

Buying borderlands will guarantee that he'll never leave his position at Gearbox.
Not buying borderlands guarantees that he'll have new people working under him on the next game.

Don't fret the details. Borderlands 3 will make record numbers for Gearbox. Fanboys will be fanboys. Randy will become richer. The keyboard grunts will get their bonuses.

[OpenMaw]

Forge, on 10 May 2019 - 09:24 PM, said:

Randy's not going anywhere until he gets caught with an under-aged girl pissing on his chest.

Buying borderlands will guarantee that he'll never leave his position at Gearbox.
Not buying borderlands guarantees that he'll have new people working under him on the next game.

Don't fret the details. Borderlands 3 will make record numbers for Gearbox. Fanboys will be fanboys. Randy will become richer. The keyboard grunts will get their bonuses.

Exactly my point. It won't do the damage we'd wnat it to. Randy needs to go. The people are Gearbox work hard.

[Forge]

people will sing a different tune if borderlands makes hundreds of millions of dollars & douche-nozzle finally has the financial resources & takes a gamble on the Duke i.p.

I'll be taking a lot of flak when I refuse to stop calling him a double-talking weaselly bullshit artist.

The guy who brought us Aliens: Colonial Marines also brought us HTTK. Oh wait. No he didn't. He didn't do that at all.

[johnnythewolf]

Commando Nukem, on 10 May 2019 - 09:10 PM, said:

Randy Pitchford didn't make shit. The fine folks at Gearbox did. Captain Fuckface is the one that should be boycotted, not Borderlands. The people are Gearbox should not be punished for Randy's bullshit.

Dave Eddings made the same point and I agree. However, how exactly do you boycott a CEO?

[Zaxx]

Commando Nukem, on 10 May 2019 - 09:10 PM, said:

Let's straighten one thing in this thread up right now.

Randy Pitchford didn't make shit. The fine folks at Gearbox did. Captain Fuckface is the one that should be boycotted, not Borderlands. The people are Gearbox should not be punished for Randy's bullshit.

Well, I'm in a pretty fortunate position then because I think Borderlands is quite shit, I can safely boycott everyone now!

[Zaxx]

johnnythewolf, on 11 May 2019 - 04:55 AM, said:

Dave Eddings made the same point and I agree. However, how exactly do you boycott a CEO?

You can't but the people over at Gearbox can so to speak. Call me paranoid but nowadays Randy is getting so much shit thrown at him that it's absolutely possible that there are people at Gearbox who want to see him gone and this is their way of making that happen.

[johnnythewolf]

Maybe the employees could do a walkout like the folks at Riot did.

[Danukem]

Zaxx, on 11 May 2019 - 06:59 AM, said:

You can't but the people over at Gearbox can so to speak. Call me paranoid but nowadays Randy is getting so much shit thrown at him that it's absolutely possible that there are people at Gearbox who want to see him gone and this is their way of making that happen.

Unless someone hijacked his Twitter account, Randy is doing this to himself.

He's not going to resign.
There's not going to be a walkout.
Randy will continue to be Randy and will continue to be the CEO for the next few years at least.
Borderlands 3 will do extremely well despite Randy's behavior.

Those are my predictions.