Chris Avellone alledges Obsidian almost silenced and forced him to never work on RPGs again

[CrichtonKicks]

I'm afraid I pointedly avoided Corporations and have forgotten everything I had to learn for the bar exam, but it doesn't strike me as impossible for a privately-held corporation to arrange itself so that the board can remove an "owner" and deprive/him her of his/her ownership stake with little or no compensation.

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Hmm. Who are the other owners of Obsidan? Was/is Chris Parker in the mix?

 

[Sinatar]

Oh damn, Eric Fenstermaker (who just to clarify has also left Obsidian and has no reason to stan for them at all) is continuing to go in on Chris Avellone:

In response to this post:

Like I said, I'd have liked to just solve it between us but it was well too late for that. I didn't like that it escalated, but looking back, if I thought it was avoidable I was kidding myself. Just being willing to make cuts didn't solve the problem. It was too late. The physical work of cutting the dialogue down in the tool, refactoring all the scripting, and everything else meant that even with the companions brought down to proper length, their implementation time was still far beyond that of any other companions. There was time allocated to implement two companions who were written to spec in the first place, no more. Had to make a lot of sacrifices to the narrative schedule and pull a lot of overtime to get it done, and I was fixing Durance bugs long after all the other companions were set. It cost us up and down the game in terms of polish time at a vital stage.

I would thank you to kindly never speak on my behalf. You do not speak for me. We are miles apart on our perspectives. Some of the events you've discussed here, my recollection differs greatly, and I don't support your accounts.

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[NathanS]

He doesn't pander to the codex dwellers however and often goes against their views.

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He does however feel it is fine to legitimize a bunch of hate filled white supremacists. So right now my take away is "fuck him."

 

[Urthor]

Pillars 1 was mediocre at best and a long shot from some of their classics they've made. Tyranny was even worse and way under budgeted by Paradox resulting in probably the most forgettable crpg since they've come back to the industry. We'll see about pillars 2 and the cain/boyarsky project but they used to be one of the leaders in the RPG space in the previous 2 gens. They're barely in the conversation anymore right now.

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Tyranny's problem was absolutely not the budget, the issue was the combat was balanced around the incredibly large health bars of allies and enemies, with low relative damage. Combat felt like an MMO in a lot of aspects, just swinging at health bars. And the fact some bright spark released it in November so it made literally no money.

Most of the systems outside of combat were extremely well made IMO, it's just the combat that was broken.

 

[hemtae]

Eric Fenstermaker chimes in:

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He also posted this

If that was incorrect, that's fine, but that's what he told me at the time.

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Like I said, I'd have liked to just solve it between us but it was well too late for that. I didn't like that it escalated, but looking back, if I thought it was avoidable I was kidding myself. Just being willing to make cuts didn't solve the problem. It was too late. The physical work of cutting the dialogue down in the tool, refactoring all the scripting, and everything else meant that even with the companions brought down to proper length, their implementation time was still far beyond that of any other companions. There was time allocated to implement two companions who were written to spec in the first place, no more. Had to make a lot of sacrifices to the narrative schedule and pull a lot of overtime to get it done, and I was fixing Durance bugs long after all the other companions were set. It cost us up and down the game in terms of polish time at a vital stage.

I would thank you to kindly never speak on my behalf. You do not speak for me. We are miles apart on our perspectives. Some of the events you've discussed here, my recollection differs greatly, and I don't support your accounts.

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Ninja'd

EDIT: gossip

 

[Yearsoflurking]

I hate how some people here often automatically believes the first side to a story

 

[xir]

what was his debt? to the company, or personal/medical?

 

[Al3x1s]

He does however feel it is fine to legitimize a bunch of hate filled white supremacists. So right now my take away is "fuck him."

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Maybe don't selectively quote or respond at all if you are only willing to present your hot takes rather than engage in actual conversation, you could have just written that same thing without pretending it's a real reply to me. It's not.

 

[Gray]

what was his debt? to the company, or personal/medical?

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I take it to mean medical debt related to family health problems.

 

[Sinatar]

Oh damn, Eric Fenstermaker (who just to clarify has also left Obsidian and has no reason to stan for them at all) is continuing to go in on Chris Avellone:

In response to this post:

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Chris Avellone's response

I may post a longer critique to this in the Eternity Codex forums, since this is an Eternity thing, including how to approach narrative management in general.

For the rest of this, though, it's indicative of the overall process and pipelines in place, some of which Eric is not responsible for or even knew about.

Get ready for a lot of carriage returns. Also tldr; this is an example of a flawed process in place.

Based on the fragment quoted in your post, I'll take that as a, "yes, I agree with the points the fragment is referencing."

As for the rest of your response, I can sense the frustration. I'm trying to feel bad for your sacrifice and overtime – and under different circumstances, I would.

But if you scripted and implemented something you didn't even review (especially when it's 10x easier and faster to make comments and edits before implementing, let alone fixing those same errors, not to mention it's part of a Creative Lead's job), well, that's on you.

It's not what I would have done – and if I had, I would accept the responsibility for reworking the elements. That's not even a game industry lesson, it's a life lesson.

If it's easier to blame me for putting the cart before the horse, all right, but I don't know what else to tell you except that sympathy wasn't the emotion I felt reading this, only confusion ("well… why did you do it that way then?").

I'll be blunt and say sympathy certainly wasn't the emotion the other people doing overtime and sacrifices for the narrative felt, and I'm not even talking about the Tyranny team - but the sub-leads on Eternity who weren't in support of it, either.

In those cases, however, I told them they should bring it up with you and give you a chance to address it before escalating it to me (which I consider bad form, as it was sometimes clear they just wanted an excuse to tell you "an owner said you were wrong").

But even if that didn't work out, they shouldn't take it to me – it should go to the Lead Designer next and get his take, and so on and so forth. Some had, but not all.

Other Thoughts!

Although you've blamed me for this in the past, it certainly wasn't my decision not to give you additional support or personnel to get things done in a timely manner – but one issue with being an owner of a multi-owner company is you get to share the blame for all owner decisions, even ones you have no idea have been made.

If it were up to me, I'd have look for ways to downscope (like with the intermittent VO) and if that failed, sacrificed funds to get the team to a proper size to do the game properly, and I've said as much about sacrifice in the past – it's an investment for the future, and it reduces bugs and overtime.

I don't think any developer should be working more than 40 hours a week, and if they are, the pipeline is likely mismanaged, overly ambitious, has feature-itis or tweak-itis, or is broken in some other respect. It may also be the fault of the actual developer to put more content in than intended, or doing work outside their discipline and/or that's clearly too much for them.

It's unfortunate the PoE editor can't handle chunk deletions well if it wasted that much time – the edits I provided were chunked accordingly. I doubt that's a programmer oversight as the programmer who worked on the dialogue editor while I was at Obsidian I've always thought was exceptional and did a great job (I'll leave him nameless to keep him out of this, but he knows who he is).

As mentioned in this thread ("MF", I believe, I don't know how to mark his user name because I am old), it seems odd for a pipeline to be unable to do that – but I'm not familiar with how exactly you did it or what process you used except that you specifically promised you would handle all the scripting so I could return to Tyranny. I took you at your word.

I do feel in light of PoE1, being able to do chunk deletions easily might have benefited the narrative presentation.

But before you think I'm blaming you for PoE1's overall word count with that last sentence, I'm not. The over-abundance of text in general is a larger issue. Sure, I can edit my text, but for the rest, something else is going on. So let's get to word count in general.

For example, according to localizers, PoE2's word count alone ended up double the word count expected and double the amount Obsidian budgeted for. This has nothing to do with VO, this is word count. This also seemed to be a surprise to some.

So to be clear, it's not all on you for too much wordage for PoE1 or even PoE2. You did a companion for PoE2. I didn't work on PoE2. It is a larger problem across both games that was unaddressed. I suspect the lead/project lead for PoE2 was lectured for going over the word count budget, but I could be wrong.

If those figures are accurate – and they may not be - the word count bloat would have become worse when VO entered the picture, which was hinted by the team as not being their decision, but instead dictated by upper management close to the game's end date. If it was upper management, ideally, they'd be ready to accept the budget costs involved with that decision vs. blaming someone else. I've already made my thoughts on VO budgeting known, but it's expensive and it can be wasteful.

Still, to be fair, even with regards to the word bloat, they may have been able to do cuts to PoE2 word count at the end, I hope (brevity helps as well as being open to large edits). If so, I strongly suspect PoE2's lead would take responsibility for going over budget vs. blaming someone who edited his work as soon as he was aware of his boss's requests, especially if that person editing his own work was an owner and technically their superior.

Overall, I'd take all these examples as a lesson of overall pipeline dysfunction and poor communication up and down management through the sub-leads and back again – this is just a symptom of a much larger problem that's either dictated, done as a de facto routine by senior employees or leads, or never discussed at all, like it was in this case.

The only thing I feel wrong with this is supporting it and saying it's okay. That it's good enough. That it's acceptable. That it's forgivable. People can be forgiven, but surrendering to the process can't be. If the process is a problem, it's something that should be fixed. If not, it becomes disheartening and damaging.

Subscribers to a broken system don't elicit any sympathy from me – it's their choice. If you're supporting a flawed pipeline and flawed process – including one that may include several problems of your own making – and if you can do nothing to change it, then it's best to remove yourself from that pipeline.

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[TheWordyGuy]

Somebody has been beating the drum pretty hard about this at the Steam forums.

https://steamcommunity.com/app/560130/discussions/0/1696046342849684188/

Two observations. 1) The person beating the drum at the Steam forums is clearly not interested in hearing the other side of the story. And 2) Obsidian has full powers of moderation at this particular Steam forum and has chosen to allow the thread to exist, which says a lot.

Either way, I personally like to see people argue in good faith, and it seems clear enough that this story is being... 'presented'... more favourably in one person's light.

 

[Ahasverus]

How would a contract like that even be legal?

NDAs I can understand, but removing the ability to "critique" the company's work entirely? Removing the ability to ever work on a game that can be described as an "RPG"? How do you even define that in legal terms to begin with? Non compete clauses can only go so far, and are illegal in many states to begin with.

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They are probably not legal. It's just that the sole possibility of having to incur in legal costs is a great scare tactic.

 

[Jintor]

I genuinely don't understand de-ownership in this context but I suppose that would depend on the incorporation docs/company charter right? Not that I know much Cali law

 

[SFLUFAN]

I'm afraid I pointedly avoided Corporations and have forgotten everything I had to learn for the bar exam, but it doesn't strike me as impossible for a privately-held corporation to arrange itself so that the board can remove an "owner" and deprive/him her of his/her ownership stake with little or no compensation.

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It's entirely possible that Avellone had a special class of stock that entitled him to the same profit-sharing rights as the owners but didn't convey the same capital ownership/voting rights. This would especially be the case if he didn't necessarily "buy in" with his own monetary capital but was either granted the shares or earned them through "sweat equity".

As you said, privately-held corporations can be weird-ass entities when it comes to corporate ownership.

 

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Chris Avellone's response

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Thank you for going through the posts and actually extracting more responses from related parties than OP who was only willing to look at the first post.

There is obviously more to this story than OP was willing to show at first glance, which elicited all the reaction posts.

 

[Sinatar]

More from Avellone regarding the broken management processes in Obsidian:

That's a fair statement and fair challenge. I did it by establishing a foundation of expectations - something no other department at Obsidian had. I did this because I thought setting expectations and benchmarks for each role would be helpful for people taking on those roles.

What I did was simple - list out expectations for every designer position, and say, "here's the least we expect from you in this position, but we expect more, because we as a company are better than that."

That turned out not to be the case.*

I firmly believed in these expectations, I believed in titles, lead roles, and responsibilities – not to be limited by them, but "this is the foundation of what you should do." If you're doing the job, you get the title (including folks like Eric, who were continuously denied a Creative Lead role due more to politics than what they were actually doing).

But - I was told 8 years into the process that this was irrelevant, and that what guidelines I established for designers and lead designers (of every category) wasn't worthwhile – this was conveyed to me by Feargus. As he told me, giving expectations for every position was, in fact, wrong. Feargus doesn't give expectations to his producers - nor should we in other departments, as owners. I didn't have a good response to this at first because I was genuinely shocked.

I argued my case (since his response was a surprise – and the very late response after so many years genuinely surprised me), and I lost – he simply said to provide expectations for each role was the wrong thing to do because "people will only do the expectations you lay out" which is a dim view of human nature. And it says an unfortunate amount about who we hired.

So – to say it, and I covered this in presentations on hiring: I don't believe "people only do the littlest required" if you've hired the right people and plus, assigning roles and responsibilities solves a lot of problems before they become problems. I did feel I was alone in this aspect, but it seemed self-evident to me - give people the title, the responsibility, and the least of your expectations, and good people will do amazing things beyond anything you could dictate to them.

But I was surprised by his late-term response, his lack of faith in design, and I was disheartened by it. Everything I had been coaching and trying to develop as a foundation had been struck out in one, casual and dismissive, 5-minute conversation.

It's worth noting that after this occurred, I got accused by a number of designers as "not enforcing the expectations more." I told them that the expectations had been overruled for every position and was now catch-as-catch-can for each project.

* These expectations, however, are now apparently in use today, because it's not what they were about, but who speaks to them – which is a topic for another time. In my opinion, the truest test of a manager is they treat the facts they are evaluating as facts, not judging them based on the person relating those facts. True story from a DS3 designer (who left for Blizzard after Stormlands) - we did one not-so-amusing test of this during Dungeon Siege 3, where we had two people tell Feargus the exact same thing, and he dismissed one out of hand, but gladly listened and agreed with the other – even though they were both telling him the exact same thing. At that point, I did break a little inside, but I added it to my manager post-mortem of what not to do as a manager.

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[Sinatar]

More from Avellone

First off, I'm glad you said Scrum and not Agile development.

I don't blame Eric for not being able to change any of these things – I do think he provided guidance to a lot of new Eternity writers, and we did work to accommodate him after New Vegas.

But before you think I'm being overly magnanimous, Eric absolutely drove away a lot of talented writers (esp. John Gonzalez – Shadow over Mordor, Horizon Zero Dawn), although John likely wouldn't ever admit to the fact that Eric hated him; also, we were forced to isolate Eric from John's Lead Writer responsibilities (which was a failure on our part, but I wasn't in charge of New Vegas, which had a lot of inner development conflicts across the board).

Even more after John left, we actually changed our hiring procedure to cater to Eric on Eternity, since we knew if he didn't approve of a writer, you might as well set a torch any writer that worked with him.

Overall, I thought John was a great writer.

When I talked to Eric about the perspectives on John (since no one else had), his solution was, "let's just divide New Vegas tasks so John and I never have to interact with each other," which was like, that moment where all the sound evaporates from the room and all you see is the other person's lips moving, but you can't bring yourself to acknowledge what they're saying. I mean, the person you're denouncing - he's your Lead. He's a good writer. So are you. Try to meet in the middle. But – no, that was not to be.

Despite the situation, John turned in his notice (which also broke me a little more) and went on to bigger and better things – Mordor, Horizon: Zero Dawn. Kudos to him, but a huge loss for Obsidian in writing talent (much like George Ziets and Travis Stout). All could have been prevented, imo.

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[Nassudan]

Sounds like standard office bs politics more than anything.

 

[KuwabaraTheMan]

My takes based on this thread:

1. Avellone almost certainly got screwed over and done dirty by Obsidian

2. Avellone is not coming across well, especially with his swipes at other people.

3. The Codex remains a dumpster fire of a website with one of the most obnoxious user bases on the internet.

 

[the_wart]

Good lord Avellone is just venting about internal office politics that didn't go his way. As well as insulting a bunch of people making games he either had very little or literally no involvement in.

 

[matimeo]

Sadly this doesn't seem far fetched to me. I know of many stories where big companies especially attempt to intimidate people in various ways. They know with how low wages are for most you most likely can't afford a lawyer so they say all sorts of things to intimidate.

Most is not enforceable but a normal person with a family can't take a risk of being caught in litigation with a company who has unlimited funds even if you win in the end you could potentially end up in deep debt and blacklisted as companies would rather avoid hiring someone who was in litigation with a previous employer.

The worst part is all the mental anguish people are forced to go thru while trying to make their next move.
At some point things get personal and certain people use companies as a weapon to intentionally damage others both personally and professionally. It's so hard to share what's going on because one, it's so insane who would believe me? And 2, its such a shock.

If you are someone who starts to gain influence especially externally which then allows you to influence internally, you become a threat to those who think they should control who influences.

I've seen some crazy stuff done.

This is the era where even if you give your company 2 weeks notice you could be escorted out by security that day. Seen this at both gaming and tech companies. It's pretty ruthless out there and employees especially creatives are going to have to be prepared to defend themselves or things will continue to get worse.

 

[Diarrhea Day-Lewis]

Wow fuck Obsidian. Won't buy their games in the future unless they fire all those people at the top. De-owner him?

Jeez. Sadly they've made some games I love but oh well.

 

[CrichtonKicks]

I've seen similar systems and process from Avellone overs the past two years. It's all very inside baseball stuff and seems like it's probably good stuff for a GDC presentation or the like. But these posts seem a world away from his comments in the interview. I understand he has a different view on this stuff than others at Obsidian but it feels like a more benign "hey our cultures differ so maybe I need to find an organization that's a better fit for me" vs the scorched earth approach he's taking.

Like given the tenor of the initial comments I'm waiting to find out the company was embezzling funds, there was mass sexual harassment, or something else equally huge. Not "they didn't agree with my proposed organization hierarchy."

 

[Cap G]

As much as I think it's Grade A douchery to publicly start shit like this right before the release of Pillars 2 (and believe me, publicly launching a PR molotov about their ability to competently develop their products and work with their employees is some high octane grade A douchery) I generally am agreeing with what Chris is posting and deeply appreciate both his and Eric's perspectives on their experiences of project.

Divorced from the PR clusterfuck of the situation, this is really informative.

 

[Aaron Stack]

Y'all really ready to shit on Obsidian based on the bias of one person? Not even substantiated claims?

 

[NathanS]

Maybe don't selectively quote or respond at all if you are only willing to present your hot takes rather than engage in actual conversation, you could have just written that same thing without pretending it's a real reply to me. It's not.

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Or maybe going "okay yes its full of white supremacists BUT can't we just ignore that? " My answer is NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.

 

[CrichtonKicks]

Just saw the stuff above. Now Avellone is publicly airing dirty laundry between Fenstermaker and John Gonzales? Screw Avellone- that isn't his business to share.

 

[Enduin]

Just saw the stuff above. Now Avellone is publicly airing dirty laundry between Fenstermaker and John Gonzales? Screw Avellone- that isn't his business to share.

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Yeah that shit is real dirty.

 

[MattyG]

After reading more, it's clear my initial "what the fuck, Obsidian" post was ill-informed. Seems like a very complicated situation.

 

[Chumley]

Shit, my opinion just took a total 180 after educating myself about that site and seeing Fenstermaker's comments. I've actually corresponded with him back when FNV came out. I had no idea Avellone aligned himself with people like that. Disgusting.

 

[SFLUFAN]

After reading more, it's clear my initial "what the fuck, Obsidian" post was ill-informed. Seems like a very complicated situation.

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Always remember that there are three sides to every issue, story, or argument: your side, my side, and the truth.

 

[Avitus]

After reading more, it's clear my initial "what the fuck, Obsidian" post was ill-informed. Seems like a very complicated situation.

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A talented but difficult developer leaves a studio that has at times encountered difficulties. Why would we expect anything less?

The more Avellone talks, the less I like what I am hearing (and not about Obisidian).

 

[Deleted member 11413]

These posts from Avellone are fascinating, but honestly he probably shouldn't be posting them in public like this because no one outside of a game development environment can accurately evaluate what he's talking about and form an opinion about it.

That and some of it is pure office politics, posting about that is extremely unprofessional in any industry

 

[AWizardDidIt]

oh no Avellone what you doin...

 

[Mutagenic]

You should rarely take anything at face value.

 

[the_wart]

After reading more, it's clear my initial "what the fuck, Obsidian" post was ill-informed. Seems like a very complicated situation.

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The initial allegations could indeed be a "what the fuck" situation, if they really did strip him of owner rights and try to get him to sign a wildly restrictive non-compete agreement. I'd be interested if an actual journalist could investigate what when down. But the fact that he has turned this into a bitter re-litigation of years-old office politics to an audience of sycophants does not do much for his credibility.

 

[Sinatar]

Couple more Avellone posts: 1 and 2

Interplay: First few years were stressful b/c Black Isle was finding its way, PST and F2 were fun but stressful, Icewind Dale 1 was pretty laid back (I was coming off Torment and Fallout 2 crunch and got some downtime), then fear of bankruptcy and collapse set in around IWD2 and kept growing, etc., working on Van Buren before BG3 collapse was a lot of fun, then BG3 got canceled, departures happened, etc. Interplay in the early years had a great camaraderie about it, though, especially in the "old" building where people were crammed together by necessity.

Obsidian: KOTOR2, NWN2 were stressful, MotB was an upswing (I liked working on that very much), things started going sour again around AP/Aliens (inc. the layoffs), I didn't work on DS3, New Vegas was stressful, the DLCs were a fun time, but the next round of layoffs kind of ruined the end of that run. The morale of the studio did go up after South Park was released, as a lot of people liked the game so there were more eyes on the studio, but the rise in morale wasn't because of working on South Park (which was stressful). After that, it was pretty uncertain and had a lot of ups and downs. Armored Warfare kept most of the studio afloat, though, but the drawback was once the deal fell through, it looked like there was no way to place everyone on a new project, so again - more layoffs (I wasn't there when that happened).

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I think there might have been a bonus once in the ten+ years I was there, but it was very early on. It wasn't normally done (nor were the yearly reviews regularly done and apparently, still aren't).

EDIT: And this isn't a secret, but the payscale at Obsidian is definitely on the low end of the industry as well - the tradeoff is you get to work on RPGs, though (usually).

EDIT 2: I didn't answer about layoffs, but the rate is about once every three years, if I'm tracking the numbers correctly. The end of a project doesn't always mean a layoff, though - but at other times with cancelled/lost projects like Armored Warfare, there apparently wasn't enough funds to keep people on while securing a new project (which takes time, usually months).

The Stormlands cancellation definitely had no back-up plans (as has been relayed), but I don't blame Microsoft for that - while I wasn't on the project, it turns out there were signs they were unhappy with the project and the team a long time before they finally canceled the game, and the warning signs were there, but no contingency plans were ever made.

Once things really started going south, the producer-owners definitely worked hard to try and persuade Microsoft to keep working with them but it was too late - a lot of what you see related in the media and documentaries is mostly a result of the fact you can't do anything else but try and put yourself in a noble light vs. the demands of the big evil publisher when something like that happens - but in fact, there were big problems on both sides. The former, however, definitely makes for a better story.

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[Virtua]

Holy shit. Absolutely disgusting. Makes me actually re-evaluate my support of the company.

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It's almost like almost all companies are heinous or greedy in some way and you should stop worrying about supporting or not supporting them on any basis except the quality of their creations

 

[Chumley]

The initial allegations could indeed be a "what the fuck" situation, if they really did strip him of owner rights and try to get him to sign a wildly restrictive non-compete agreement. I'd be interested if an actual journalist could investigate what when down. But the fact that he has turned this into a bitter re-litigation of years-old office politics to an audience of sycophants does not do much for his credibility.

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For me it's the combination of taking Fenstermaker's word over Avellones, and seeing how fucking abhorrent that site actually is and knowing that if Avellone aligns himself in any way with them he is completely suspect now. He's a talented guy but maybe he's actually a scumbag.

 

[the_wart]

For me it's the combination of taking Fenstermaker's word over Avellones, and seeing how fucking abhorrent that site actually is and knowing that if Avellone aligns himself in any way with them he is completely suspect now. He's a talented guy but maybe he's actually a scumbag.

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Apparently RPG Codex didn't go full alt-right until gamergate, so a lot of people you might not expect have legacy accounts there (like Eric Fenstermaker and other Obsidian devs) and occasionally they get interesting interviews. But to be choosing their forums as your audience for something like this, in the year of our lord 2018... oy.

 

[ShinySunny]

Reading these responses, I guess I would have to take Chris side.
It is more detailed than Fenstermaker's words since Chris went through in a lot of details on what happened from the top to bottom.

 

[Sinatar]

Oh boy... this might get even uglier

Regarding if he's worried about blowback from this:

No, but good question.

Aside from making up what Obsidian chose to never pay me, I set aside a legal fund to deal with any repercussions, and I will fight anything they bring to the table, tooth and nail. I welcome it.

If confronted with evil (as categorized by existing employees who will soon resign - check back in a week or two for the latest round, even though one of them dropped yesterday), I will be prepared to fight it. I guarantee I have more in my bank account than Obsidian does, since they rarely think more than 2 months in advance - and unfortunately, their very, very expensive lawyer charges by the hour, which is unfortunate, but he knows, remora-like, what to attach himself to to get the most financial gain.

But it's all okay - Paradox has already been in touch, and they aren't too happy with how Obsidian handled the work they asked for. Future revelations will likely be much more fun than mine.

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[data]

Oh boy... this might get even uglier

Regarding if he's worried about blowback from this:

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If that's the case, does that mean we'll see something happen soon regarding this?

I wonder what Paradox has to do with this situation or why he's even in touch with them considering he's no longer with them.

 

[Mifune]

Avellone is sounding more and more like a douche, honestly. Crowing about layoffs/departures before they happen? Who does that?

 

[BossAttack]

These posts from Avellone are fascinating, but honestly he probably shouldn't be posting them in public like this because no one outside of a game development environment can accurately evaluate what he's talking about and form an opinion about it.

That and some of it is pure office politics, posting about that is extremely unprofessional in any industry

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Eh, I don't think so. Is it uncomfortable? Yes. But, I think this idea of just staying quiet actually just hurts many professions. If someone is an asshole, if someone is shit, if a company is a back-stabbing piece of shit; then people should be free to air those grievances out for all to see and hear as opposed to shutting up or talking about them in hushed whispers in dark alleyways. Avellone is done with Obsidian, there is no reason he should keep his experience working there a secret all the way to his grave.

 

[CrichtonKicks]

Apparently RPG Codex didn't go full alt-right until gamergate, so a lot of people you might not expect have legacy accounts there (like Eric Fenstermaker and other Obsidian devs) and occasionally they get interesting interviews. But to be choosing their forums as your audience for something like this, in the year of our lord 2018... oy.

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I know some people defend the codex by saying it's just the community that is toxic but the articles (and therefore interviews) are fine but Avellone has engaged with the community for a long, long time.

To be fair, I do love that the Codex is a place where there is a 130 page thread praising the merits of the Might and Magic series. But the forum overall is incredibly toxic and filled with tons of hate speech and that is never called out. If Avellone wants to air these grievances legitimately I don't know why he doesn't contact Jason Schrier who has contacts at Obsidian that could either back up the story or provide an alternative.

And seriously, the Fenstermaker stuff above is a dick move from someone writing giant screeds on the merits of professionalism. Avellone's comments could have direct effects on Fenstermaker's ability to keep or maintain gainful employment in the industry. That was horrendously uncalled for when Fenstermeyer was nothing but professional in response to him. I hope there is a heartfelt apology from Avellone buried in that Codex thread.

 

[Al3x1s]

Or maybe going "okay yes its full of white supremacists BUT can't we just ignore that? " My answer is NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.

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Who said any of that, what are you even talking about at this point, who are you talking to (and why quote me when it's clear you aren't discussing anything I said so you're not talking to me) and why do it here, maybe read the title/OP again?

 

[Sinatar]

If that's the case, does that mean we'll see something happen soon regarding this?

I wonder what Paradox has to do with this situation or why he's even in touch with them considering he's no longer with them.

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I'm assuming they are interested in his claims that Obsidian pulled resources off of Tyranny to help finish Pillars.

 

[Sinatar]

Alright I've waded through all 78 pages of that Codex thread and I think I got all the relevant stuff here.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need a shower.

 

[MoonFrog]

Thanks. Fascinating reading even if I don't know Obsidian or Avellone at all really.