[Zaxx]

Trooper Dan, on 11 May 2019 - 10:37 AM, said:

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

Sure but the people over at Gearbox surely know him so they must know that it's easy to make him do stupid shit. He has a bad reputation and he can act like an idiot, you can turn the man against himself easily without much of an effort.

[Jimmy]

The CEO is the chief representative of the company. His job is, expressly, to not fuck over his employees. If he acts like a fucking retard on a regular basis and consumers decide they do not want to support him or the company of which he is the literal figurehead, it is not the fault of the consumer and you shouldn't try to guilt trip the consumer by way of "think of the poor employees!"

If I was on the board of directors of ANY company and my employee, whose primary job is being the public face of the company, acted just once like Randy does every day I would lobby for him to be fired IMMEDIATELY. He's been acting like a jackass for YEARS. It's unacceptable, and he gets away with it and the company will suffer in the long run, and it's not the fault of the consumer, but rather leadership within Gearbox itself.

[NightFright]

I wonder how the Gearbox employees can live with a boss like that. No doubts there are a lot of talented people working there, otherwise games like Borderlands wouldn't be possible. Seeing your CEO launching one torpedo after the other into your the reputation of your company must be incredibly frustrating.

[Sanek]

Jimmy 100MPH, on 11 May 2019 - 09:48 PM, said:

The CEO is the chief representative of the company. His job is, expressly, to not fuck over his employees. If he acts like a fucking retard on a regular basis and consumers decide they do not want to support him or the company of which he is the literal figurehead, it is not the fault of the consumer and you shouldn't try to guilt trip the consumer by way of "think of the poor employees!"

If I was on the board of directors of ANY company and my employee, whose primary job is being the public face of the company, acted just once like Randy does every day I would lobby for him to be fired IMMEDIATELY. He's been acting like a jackass for YEARS. It's unacceptable, and he gets away with it and the company will suffer in the long run, and it's not the fault of the consumer, but rather leadership within Gearbox itself.

Unfortunately, it doesn't work this way in real life. Boards of directors really don't care how CEO behaves if the money keeps coming. Basically, they allow Randy to behave like that because Borderlands series is a money-making machine. Once his behavior become directly responsible for the sales decline, that's when he might get fired.

[Tea Monster]

Also, in his defence, when the video for the Borderlands reveal went south repeatedly, he kept his cool under fire. Nobody on the board will look past that, and the success with Boredomlands 3. To the people who make the decisions, he's golden.

Also, there are a load of Boredomlands fanboys out there, calling for restraint in buying their products will fall on deaf ears. You might as well lobby for a boycott on Epic due to Fortnite crunch and the dodgy dealings of their online store. It aint gonna happen. All those sad little tennyboppers will run down to Gamestop with their Dad's credit card in their hands for every DLC and new game that comes out.

The AAA games industry badly needs an upset, if not a complete Atari-style reset-button mashing event. They keep pushing the envelope out with shoddy game making, bad business practices and more of an eye on finances than actual game design. It's going to happen, the question is when will the gaming public take note and vote with their (Dad's) wallets? God only knows.

[PokeThePower]

There's no board. Trooper Dan's got the score.

johnnythewolf, on 11 May 2019 - 08:00 AM, said:

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

The best thing that could happen to Riot's customers is if all those people quit.

[DisgustedGrunt]

Sanek, on 12 May 2019 - 02:20 AM, said:

Unfortunately, it doesn't work this way in real life. Boards of directors really don't care how CEO behaves if the money keeps coming. Basically, they allow Randy to behave like that because Borderlands series is a money-making machine. Once his behavior become directly responsible for the sales decline, that's when he might get fired.

and by often i mean always.

[oasiz]

Tea Monster, on 12 May 2019 - 08:05 AM, said:

Also, in his defence, when the video for the Borderlands reveal went south repeatedly, he kept his cool under fire. Nobody on the board will look past that, and the success with Boredomlands 3. To the people who make the decisions, he's golden.

Also, there are a load of Boredomlands fanboys out there, calling for restraint in buying their products will fall on deaf ears. You might as well lobby for a boycott on Epic due to Fortnite crunch and the dodgy dealings of their online store. It aint gonna happen. All those sad little tennyboppers will run down to Gamestop with their Dad's credit card in their hands for every DLC and new game that comes out.

The AAA games industry badly needs an upset, if not a complete Atari-style reset-button mashing event. They keep pushing the envelope out with shoddy game making, bad business practices and more of an eye on finances than actual game design. It's going to happen, the question is when will the gaming public take note and vote with their (Dad's) wallets? God only knows.

It's always been about business.
In case you're referring to this "Video game crash", Games pushed out on a2600 are nothing like what you get today, not even remotely close. That system was very underpowered for anything more than very basic games that generally reached their peak already at the 5min mark. They simply lost the public interest due to shovelware mediocrity and the initial "wow" of videogames fading away and this novelty was no longer enough to hold the interest of the public. At least with modern bad games you can still have enough redeeming features to keep you interested on it's own weight (like a nice B movie). Atari equal of today would be if we only had cruddy asset flips to play with, which is not the case.

Europe got even shittier games and none of that crash happened here, remember that this was US-only. But Nintendo? That was all about business. They were quite awful blackmailers with a monopoly (I'm not even overstating, they were pretty bad behind the scenes) While they did have good games but not without a platform control and rules that put even apple-like lockdown to shame. I am not denying their great catalogue but NES, despite it's flaws, was simply just the right system at the right time, nintendo was really lucky to get a few good games during this time that propelled their share and allowed their plan to shine.

Once your team and goals grow, things inevitably become more corporate-like and a lot of creativity gets squashed, this is not just limited to gaming but it works well enough and makes money, so it keeps happening.
What many seek is something you can find in indie gaming, not necessarily even indie anymore but more like cool games with a smaller controlled scope, unique concept and funds to do so. AAA games as it was 15 years ago still exists, the reference point in comparison just keeps changing each year as the bar goes higher.

[Jimmy]

WorkWandaWork, on 12 May 2019 - 08:42 AM, said:

There's no board. Trooper Dan's got the score.

HAHAHA. What a dumb way to set up a corporation.

Then there is truly no hope for them, because Randy will never change his behaviour. He will destroy his company in time. Just give it time. No amount of fanboys can prevent the inevitability of reckless behaviour.

[Sanek]

3DR should not have allowed him to make that E4L1 back in the day.

[PokeThePower]

Not if you want to retain complete control of the company with your co-founders, which is the bulk of your small to mid sized studios. It's a pretty normal setup. If Gearbox dies it won't be because of Randy's social/lugen media drama. It will be because it gets too rotted and bogged down from within eventually incapable of executing on its purpose. The rot ultimately will have to be placed at the feet of the head for allowing it in and to grow, but it'll be due to a collection of daily behaviors and attitudes from a lot of folks creating internal friction getting in the way of work that drives out effective people.

There's probably not a single person at Gearbox who doesn't complain... and if they haven't quit they fully understand the score and have decided the pros outweigh the cons.

[Sledgehammer]

Jimmy 100MPH, on 12 May 2019 - 11:59 AM, said:

HAHAHA. What a dumb way to set up a corporation.

It doesn't matter if it's dumb or not, what matters is that it works (though not forever since self-destruction is a major downside of this), just like it works with fucking people over who pay for your product (and I'm not just talking about social media). There are many companies in USA which operates this way, EA is the most famous one. I bet this is the main reason why AAA industry went downhill completely.

[Forge]

Sledgehammer, on 13 May 2019 - 02:45 AM, said:

the main reason why AAA industry went downhill completely.

casuals

[DisgustedGrunt]

Sledgehammer, on 13 May 2019 - 02:45 AM, said:

the main reason why AAA industry went downhill completely.

When they realized they could sell a skin /weapon /character as dlc and people would buy it. Why make actual content when you can recolor the same shit and sell it?.

[OpenMaw]

I mean




Jesus.

People who think he would't turn around and bite fan productions int he ass, for whatever reason, or that we're likely to see the DNF stuff make a release... Just LOOk at this track record.

[Danukem]

Well that confirms my speculation that the assault on Eddings was a shove from Randy.

[johnnythewolf]

Oh my god. Is Randy Pitchford turning into the Donald Trump of the video game industry or what?

[razgriz]

I wonder what the worse could happen to Gearbox Software?

I could care less for Randy though....

[OpenMaw]

Randy's got enough of a goddamn ego that I could see him try to pull the company down with him. He does hurt "GEARBOX" everytime he goes on one of his fits.

[MusicallyInspired]

Low hanging fruit.

[OpenMaw]

Care to clarify that? Randy is low hanging fruit?

[Forge]

[MusicallyInspired]

Commando Nukem, on 13 May 2019 - 07:05 PM, said:

Care to clarify that? Randy is low hanging fruit?

Johnny's comment. I figured it was obvious so I didn't quote it.

[Danukem]

If you google "Borderlands 3", you will see nothing about Randy in the search results unless you get all the way to the fourth page of results. As unprofessional as his Twitter outbursts are, and as ill-tempered a boss as he appears to be, it's not going to hurt Gearbox much unless it gets worse. Heck, if he just pipes down for a while and behaves himself (relatively speaking) for the next few months, this will be all but forgotten except by some games journalists and industry geeks.

[MusicallyInspired]

This whole thing reminds me of Replay Games. Except that guy wasn't Randy Pitchford and head of a huge well-known AAA studio like Gearbox. But he couldn't keep his mouth shut either and totally destroyed his company and everyone who worked with him (who were all great people). Forcing one notable Al Lowe into permanent retirement.

[johnnythewolf]

Trooper Dan, on 13 May 2019 - 08:06 PM, said:

If you google "Borderlands 3", you will see nothing about Randy in the search results unless you get all the way to the fourth page of results. As unprofessional as his Twitter outbursts are, and as ill-tempered a boss as he appears to be, it's not going to hurt Gearbox much unless it gets worse. Heck, if he just pipes down for a while and behaves himself (relatively speaking) for the next few months, this will be all but forgotten except by some games journalists and industry geeks.

Is not a known PR practice to game search results, though?

[PokeThePower]

MusicallyInspired, on 13 May 2019 - 08:31 PM, said:

This whole thing reminds me of Replay Games. Except that guy wasn't Randy Pitchford and head of a huge well-known AAA studio like Gearbox. But he couldn't keep his mouth shut either and totally destroyed his company and everyone who worked with him (who were all great people). Forcing one notable Al Lowe into permanent retirement.

Dude, I was playing PSVR Werewolf one night and we had a good group going. Some guy joined and at some point started sharing that he was a game developer. Normally I'd completely ignore the comment because it's extremely lame to bring that up in a social game but asked where. He mentioned he owned a studio in Austin and I mentioned I was also an Austin dev, etc. Fast forward like an hour and he flips out on the group and rage quits over homophobia (the person who made the comment was gay but he didn't know that). I used the info he gave to google him and saw the full story behind him and it ALL made sense.

[MusicallyInspired]

Wow how random lol. What an ordeal that was.

Incidentally,the free game "Serena" that popped up in everyone's Steam libraries one day was borne from that fiasco. I helped with the music!

[Kristian Joensen]

I thought this was interesting: Apparently David Eddings got nothing out of the Telltale Borderlands game because of a deal he himself put together.

[Steve 64]

That really fuck up, if I was Ceo I would make sure he was paid for his role.