Dangen replies to Medium article
Dangen has posted their response to the article:
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Dangen Entertainment Robbing Indie Devs? (Updates Threadmarked)
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Is it "their" response?
It literally sounds like what a lawyer wrote.
...Not really? It's fairly detailed and seemingly genuine. Whether you agree with their interpretation of the facts or who is then at fault, is an entirely different issue of course.
I'm only at the beginning, but to me this
Dangen said:
says that "a Dangen member is indeed a sexual predator, just there is no public evidence to support this. All those other claims, now those are false and here is why."
Of course I know that they didn't want to say this, and maybe it's my English that's not that good, isn't that the logic of those sentences?
As we all know innocent people always attack their accusers while reversing victim and offender.
It's quite an important business element for them to provide some kind of counter and rebuttal. I'll leave personal allegations towards Ben Judd aside, but a company defending their business practices is totally normal and not some kind of admissal of guilt or wrongdoing.
You give a statement. You don't give screenshots of conversations.
Yielding all these is basically telling everyone your company is fine with breaches of trust.
Wait so the accuser can release stuff but the accused shouldn't to defend themselves?
Dangen removed names and other private information so they might be fine. But I am not sure what Medium constitutes as private information.
The accuser is doing it anonymously.
The company is speaking in their own name.
That's a very big difference.
It pretty directly rebutes the tax and payment claims. Also shows where they compensated the dev for missing the golden week sale.
How? They left the accuser anonymous along with everyone related to it except for themselves. Not sure why an anonymous source using communications is any different from a known source using them. They were already publicly accused it a very damaging manner not sure how this is going to hurt them especially when it shows several of the original claims were misleading.
I don't know how you can read any of that article and come away with this impression.
Of course they are scared. That article was a direct attack on the company and a pretty effective one at that. They pretty much had to put out a response to it.
Oh I get that entirely, it's just calling out that specific translation in the article itself was funny to me in a weird way.
Taking bias on both sides into account, my major takeaway is that Dangen doesn't really seem to be a competent or professional company, overall, and Ben's weird emails are incredibly off-putting.
If I were an indie dev, I wouldn't want to work with them, at all.
Also, I don't like Schmups, but I want to buy something from the Devil Engine guy. He's cracking me up.
If I were an indie dev, I wouldn't want to work with them, at all.
Also, I don't like Schmups, but I want to buy something from the Devil Engine guy. He's cracking me up.
The response feels genuine, they admitted to mistakes and attempts to fix it, and I can believe that the accuser has a toxic enough personality to twist facts in their favor as Dangen asserts. Like the personal attack on the marketing guy who made videos laughing at failed Kickstarters did give me a negative view of him but in context, if was years ago than it seems like it's specifically digging deep for shit. Even in the accusers side of the story, their messages quickly come across as thoughtless and frustrating. I thought that could be chalked up to the issues of non-payment stressing them out but if that's how they choose to show their interactions with Dangen rather than a more professional initial correspondence than other messages must've been equally or more unprofessional.
I'm glad Dangen came back with a response, but it seems like there are a lot of important overlooked aspects of the allegations they address. I'm still reading but this one struck me:
So they counter by saying they paid musicians on Devil engine, but what about localizations? what about fight knight?
Also, the main composer of Devil Engine has apparently not been paid the revenue for the OST release by dangen?
So they counter by saying they paid musicians on Devil engine, but what about localizations? what about fight knight?
Also, the main composer of Devil Engine has apparently not been paid the revenue for the OST release by dangen?
It's cracking you up that he tells people they are dirt and makes fun of another devs mental problems while cracking jokes about suicide.
I'm glad Dangen came back with a response, but it seems like there are a lot of important overlooked aspects of the allegations they address. I'm still reading but this one struck me:
So they counter by saying they paid musicians on Devil engine, but what about localizations? what about fight knight?
Also, the main composer of Devil Engine has apparently not been paid the revenue for the OST release by dangen?
https://twitter.com/Qwesta6/status/1201947261443477505
They address the localization payment stuff in a different paragraph. Basically the german translator alluded too in the original article hasn't been paid due to incomplete paperwork on their end. They have delayed it due to medical treatments and don't seem to have any issues with payment.
Ben Judd's response is pathetic. Bringing in GG attacks, his friends, and "relationships are hard" shows his cowardice. Consent doesn't excuse anything. His sniveling words never once attempt to refute what was shown; they only try to deflect accountability to anything that isn't him.
Okay, reading it now.
No mention of Ben breaking NDA. Or the way Ben actually communicated with The Writer, which was creepy. Or how when The Writer was talking about thetrin not doing his job to Ben, who he was partying with and the lack of communication between Dangen which two different devs back up. There's a lot to learn from this I think. Obviously the buk of the article was aimed squarely at two members of Dangen, I agree that it was wrong to tar them all with the same brush since it was obvious the rest of the team were doing what was asked of them reading between the lines. Still the way their boss (Ben) operates is just sketch.
No mention of Ben breaking NDA. Or the way Ben actually communicated with The Writer, which was creepy. Or how when The Writer was talking about thetrin not doing his job to Ben, who he was partying with and the lack of communication between Dangen which two different devs back up. There's a lot to learn from this I think. Obviously the buk of the article was aimed squarely at two members of Dangen, I agree that it was wrong to tar them all with the same brush since it was obvious the rest of the team were doing what was asked of them reading between the lines. Still the way their boss (Ben) operates is just sketch.
Media outlets are generally not afraid of legal threats. US media is quite strongly protected by law, so I wouldn't worry about that.
You should re-read what Com_Raven posted. There is nothing good to come from rushing to publish. Media has generally been on holiday, and no media is going to run with just one side of the story. It's irresponsible to do so.
And, as you can see, what is withheld can be just as important as what is shown. A reputable journalist isn't going to just take a statement at face value. They're going to dig. And that takes time.
Am I surprised that Dangen replied via Medium? To be honest, yes. But I was also surprised to see the response posted here in the forum. This is the kind of thing that you would want a legal team to handle. Business disagreements are not generally litigated in the media, though there is no hard-and-fast rule that says you cannot do so. It's a level of risk that only those involved can decide upon.
To be fair, if they didn't share any screenshots people's reaction would simply be: "Where's the receipts?"
Dangen is caught between a rock and a hard place with this, because they either appear unprofessional by sharing internal conversations or will be perceived as lying frauds. The latter is something they apparently deemed more risky for their business.
At the end of the day, I don't want to pick a side with this one. Everything regarding this just strikes me as really messy.
This situation is a real mess. Not going anywhere near the Judd accusations stuff in this rebuttal, purely the Dengen/dev/anonymous author business stuff.
Reading the original medium at the time I was totally convinced. DE DEV seemed like a completely dislikable character, but they had been wronged in many ways and luckily the anonymous author was on hand to help them out and save them from being taken advantage of by a publisher (and maybe save them from themselves), along with other devs in seemingly similar situations.
Reading this 2nd one from Dangen, well... it goes to show there's two sides to every story (as I think someone actually mentioned previously - EDIT - first page " chances are the truth lies somewhere in the middle" - that was before the first medium). There's not much that goes unanswered there for me. It seems they owned their mistakes and tried to put things right financially. It all seems reasonable enough. It clearly is difficult doing business there, but that's no excuse. But mistakes seem genuine, nothign seems malicious, even the contracts stuff.
What now stands out as my one big take from this is that the author of the original medium does seem to have engineered a position between Dangen and their devs, and maybe it's not my place to suggest this, but it does appear from what Dangen wrote that they seem to have been playing Dangen and the devs off each other in order to better position themselves and set themselves up to entirely replace Dangen. I feel shitty for saying that, but it's kinda glaringly obvious. And they've effectively trashed Dangen's reputation in the process.
Like I said, it's a real mess.
Now I don't doubt there's people here who disagree and want to believe in the original article and nothing else, maybe I'll be set upon for writing this, but I'm trying my best to see this all as objectively as possible. I knew at the time when reading the original meduim that it was a very one-sided account, but that didn't really put me off or make me doubt anything being presented... maybe it did trigger little alarm bells and remind me of other initially convincing one-sided accounts posted in such ways in the past, but still.
Right you used the same word as I was posting. It's a properly fucked situation and nobody is coming out of this looking good... the dev gets exposed for being a toxic gger, Dangen get shafted seven ways, and, well, the author of the original medium maintains anonymity.... hmmmm.
EDIT: Changed all the times I wrote "dengen" -oops
EDIT2: Tried to clarify the first line.
Reading the original medium at the time I was totally convinced. DE DEV seemed like a completely dislikable character, but they had been wronged in many ways and luckily the anonymous author was on hand to help them out and save them from being taken advantage of by a publisher (and maybe save them from themselves), along with other devs in seemingly similar situations.
Reading this 2nd one from Dangen, well... it goes to show there's two sides to every story (as I think someone actually mentioned previously - EDIT - first page " chances are the truth lies somewhere in the middle" - that was before the first medium). There's not much that goes unanswered there for me. It seems they owned their mistakes and tried to put things right financially. It all seems reasonable enough. It clearly is difficult doing business there, but that's no excuse. But mistakes seem genuine, nothign seems malicious, even the contracts stuff.
What now stands out as my one big take from this is that the author of the original medium does seem to have engineered a position between Dangen and their devs, and maybe it's not my place to suggest this, but it does appear from what Dangen wrote that they seem to have been playing Dangen and the devs off each other in order to better position themselves and set themselves up to entirely replace Dangen. I feel shitty for saying that, but it's kinda glaringly obvious. And they've effectively trashed Dangen's reputation in the process.
Like I said, it's a real mess.
Now I don't doubt there's people here who disagree and want to believe in the original article and nothing else, maybe I'll be set upon for writing this, but I'm trying my best to see this all as objectively as possible. I knew at the time when reading the original meduim that it was a very one-sided account, but that didn't really put me off or make me doubt anything being presented... maybe it did trigger little alarm bells and remind me of other initially convincing one-sided accounts posted in such ways in the past, but still.
Right you used the same word as I was posting. It's a properly fucked situation and nobody is coming out of this looking good... the dev gets exposed for being a toxic gger, Dangen get shafted seven ways, and, well, the author of the original medium maintains anonymity.... hmmmm.
EDIT: Changed all the times I wrote "dengen" -oops
EDIT2: Tried to clarify the first line.
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The answer still makes me think this all could've been avoided if Nayan had been competent in his position.
Hmm... Well, it can be hard to tell what is bias and spin from one side or the other. Like the tax stuff, it sounds like "The Writer" may have misunderstood some things there, but it's not like I'm gonna investigate Japanese tax laws to find out who is right.
So they introduce a possible motive for The Writer to want to damage Dangen's brand on purpose, with some evidence that she is indeed toying with the idea of starting her own publishing business. It's... a possibility. But at that point, relationships between Dangen and the various devs were already frayed. It doesn't seem nefarious or unreasonable for The Writer to want to salvage things for those devs. Would she have tried to sabotage things for Dangen if their relationship with the devs had been going swimmingly? That's impossible to tell for sure.
Some of Dangen's rebuttals and explanations make sense, but they also ignore or misconstrue a lot of things.
Like they call out The Writer for insulting their streams, but they ignore the context in which she was saying that they waste time on streams instead of responding to their devs. I think there's a part where they say they don't ignore devs but... clearly, those devs feel different.
There's a part where they talk about The Writer being misleading when she said that Judd demanded that she attend Bitsummit, which fair enough, from the posted conversation, "demanded" seems a bit strong. But they completely ignore the details of her complaints regarding that, i.e. that it took a long time to get the promised expenses paid, and that Judd was being weird about the accommodations.
And speaking of which, there's the creepy Ben Judd stuff. He's basically saying "no, no, I'm not a creep" but he doesn't address anything he's purported to have said head on. He spends time pointing out that The Writer is misleading for mentioning that they met in a night club (I don't think that was even presented as a problem? She did explain that it was a promo event featuring the game's music. I didn't read anything more into it.) but entirely ignores the crux of the matter beyond saying that it was a professional meeting. Was it, though? Because allegedly he started asking about her romantic life, and doing the sad nerd boy who can't talk to girls routine, which sounds like the opposite of a professional meeting, especially considering it was the first time they met. But he doesn't have any comment on that, apparently. And that's not mentioning the stuff from the other accuser, with email screenshot as receipt, where he is super sketchy.
There are probably other examples, too, but yeah, I don't know. I think there's some stuff that Dangen is accused of that can be reasonably explained, but they also seem to be dodging other issues.
Also, while they redacted names from their screenshots, they're still totally "posting copies of private communications between private individuals without the explicit consent of all parties to the communication" so their article shouldn't be allowed on Medium any more than the original article.
So they introduce a possible motive for The Writer to want to damage Dangen's brand on purpose, with some evidence that she is indeed toying with the idea of starting her own publishing business. It's... a possibility. But at that point, relationships between Dangen and the various devs were already frayed. It doesn't seem nefarious or unreasonable for The Writer to want to salvage things for those devs. Would she have tried to sabotage things for Dangen if their relationship with the devs had been going swimmingly? That's impossible to tell for sure.
Some of Dangen's rebuttals and explanations make sense, but they also ignore or misconstrue a lot of things.
Like they call out The Writer for insulting their streams, but they ignore the context in which she was saying that they waste time on streams instead of responding to their devs. I think there's a part where they say they don't ignore devs but... clearly, those devs feel different.
There's a part where they talk about The Writer being misleading when she said that Judd demanded that she attend Bitsummit, which fair enough, from the posted conversation, "demanded" seems a bit strong. But they completely ignore the details of her complaints regarding that, i.e. that it took a long time to get the promised expenses paid, and that Judd was being weird about the accommodations.
And speaking of which, there's the creepy Ben Judd stuff. He's basically saying "no, no, I'm not a creep" but he doesn't address anything he's purported to have said head on. He spends time pointing out that The Writer is misleading for mentioning that they met in a night club (I don't think that was even presented as a problem? She did explain that it was a promo event featuring the game's music. I didn't read anything more into it.) but entirely ignores the crux of the matter beyond saying that it was a professional meeting. Was it, though? Because allegedly he started asking about her romantic life, and doing the sad nerd boy who can't talk to girls routine, which sounds like the opposite of a professional meeting, especially considering it was the first time they met. But he doesn't have any comment on that, apparently. And that's not mentioning the stuff from the other accuser, with email screenshot as receipt, where he is super sketchy.
There are probably other examples, too, but yeah, I don't know. I think there's some stuff that Dangen is accused of that can be reasonably explained, but they also seem to be dodging other issues.
Also, while they redacted names from their screenshots, they're still totally "posting copies of private communications between private individuals without the explicit consent of all parties to the communication" so their article shouldn't be allowed on Medium any more than the original article.
Okay sorry but what
Receipts showing predator status and you don't dare speak against it? Would accepting his actions break your evolved stance of objectivity and both-sides-ism?
My impression so far, after both this and the Nicalis brouhaha, is that
- Transcontinental indie publishing is really complicated, with a high risk running into legal quagmires compared to the returns on investment.
- Because of the above, actors in that space are more likely to be naive, predatory, or some combination of the two.
Oh fuck no, that's all obvious and he's clealy a wrongun. I just mean I'm not going near any of it because of exactly that. I worded it badly. - didn't want to suggest that while I was changing my opinion of Dengen based on the first medium, nothing in the 2nd one made me move on the Judd stuff. The 2nd medium Judd response I wasn't commenting on, "just" the rest of it. I'll edit it and make it clear.
Yes. The business side of these allegations is one thing, but in regard to Ben's specific accusations that was very clearly an attempt of obfuscating facts, brushing over unspecified mistakes, deflecting and smearing.
Since the original article happened to be taken down just before the rebuttal, it's difficult to say whether they addressed all of the claims...
The tax stuff is very believable.
It's wild that they admitted to uploading an entire OST to their Youtube channel without permission... Which kinda lends credence to the claims that they weren't respecting the IP rights of their devs.
The tax stuff is very believable.
It's wild that they admitted to uploading an entire OST to their Youtube channel without permission... Which kinda lends credence to the claims that they weren't respecting the IP rights of their devs.
The thing about "The Writer" positioning themselves into becoming a new publisher for the games is weird to me. Because to me, that's kinda the logical end result of this situation even just as the original article described it...? They ended up becoming a go-between(/producer?) role for these things as-is, and Dangen was seemingly trying to pay them to be that more formally (at a rate The Writer understandably thought was too low). Not that weird that the teams involved would end up having a conclusion of "if we no longer have a publisher, you're good at this work, it could be you"?
Some of the tax/legal stuff... willing to believe they may have gotten it wrong. But even then it doesn't really address some of the specific things about not being paid, people not being able to get money from banks due to how they handled it, etc. And their evidence for some of the more general claims of bad communication isn't exactly damning; an e-mail or message here or there doesn't prove they weren't largely bad at contacting people about things during certain times, I don't think they even touch on not passing along offers for physical releases, etc. etc. Any bit where they bring in other devs than these as proof of their good treatment also feels a bit off, because I'm pretty sure the original post acknowledged that developers that were relying on them for less services were fine.
Now, is it all complicated by The Writer apparently saying shitty stuff? Yeah, just as it already was by some of the stuff around that dev. Don't think I'm interested in supporting/following them in general or anything. But that doesn't really invalidate the claims about the company or their treatment.
And of course, the Judd stuff immediately throws the entire response into question. And is barely acknowledged beyond a couple specific things, where various little details that barely matter to the overall point - and don't really contradict what was originally said anyway - are what's fixated on rather than any of the actions/words/sudden changes in opinion from Judd. So uh... hard to take any of it in good faith, with that in mind.
Some of the tax/legal stuff... willing to believe they may have gotten it wrong. But even then it doesn't really address some of the specific things about not being paid, people not being able to get money from banks due to how they handled it, etc. And their evidence for some of the more general claims of bad communication isn't exactly damning; an e-mail or message here or there doesn't prove they weren't largely bad at contacting people about things during certain times, I don't think they even touch on not passing along offers for physical releases, etc. etc. Any bit where they bring in other devs than these as proof of their good treatment also feels a bit off, because I'm pretty sure the original post acknowledged that developers that were relying on them for less services were fine.
Now, is it all complicated by The Writer apparently saying shitty stuff? Yeah, just as it already was by some of the stuff around that dev. Don't think I'm interested in supporting/following them in general or anything. But that doesn't really invalidate the claims about the company or their treatment.
And of course, the Judd stuff immediately throws the entire response into question. And is barely acknowledged beyond a couple specific things, where various little details that barely matter to the overall point - and don't really contradict what was originally said anyway - are what's fixated on rather than any of the actions/words/sudden changes in opinion from Judd. So uh... hard to take any of it in good faith, with that in mind.
Ugh, I missed that one. Yeah, that's a no-go. Otherwise, though, I can completely understand how he could get so fed up with being jerked around by incompetent people that he stops caring. I'm currently working with some outsourcers and I wish I could just tell them off, so maybe it's mostly wishful projection on my part.
It's kinda amazing how much they're grasping at straws with their rebuttals. For example, their rebuttal against getting a developer to make a video at the very last minute was this:
"See! Technically we didn't demand them to do this, so we definitely didn't do anything wrong here!"
The article is filled with stuff like this.
During the initial back and forth regarding this request, Nayan suggested not only that either team member could take on this task, but that we only ask that they do it if they can. The developer agreed, and delivered the video on time. DANGEN staff also created a video based on the guidelines.
"See! Technically we didn't demand them to do this, so we definitely didn't do anything wrong here!"
The article is filled with stuff like this.
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This is about where I ended up on this as well. I can completely believe the tax stuff because Japanese Tax Law is fucking dense but pretty much everything else from their response is tepid at best, and that's only for the things they specifically responded to, there is plenty that they glossed over or ignored. Not the least of which is Ben Judd, I mean it was already known that the dude is a shit and any very minor attempt at addressing his specific parts in this response don't invalidate that thought at all, if anything it potentially makes Judd look worse because this was the best attempt at a defence they could muster.
I mean this whole situation is super messy but if I was an Indie dev looking in on this, I know I would think twice about working with Dangen in the future because at the absolute best, this whole mess has show that their communication is lacking in a major way.
Also this, why they decided to hit back on Medium is beyond me.
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The DE dev clearly isn't an angel and "The Writer" knew that people would support the DE dev after presenting their case in the way she did, and yet even after reading their response Dangen still look unprofessional and incompetent. For example they admitted that they fucked up with the Steam sale and after their admission they say "we weren't ready for that Sale" but as the DE dev pointed out to that point in time Dangen had just published one game this year... it's difficult to believe that a whole team would miss or wouldn't be ready for a Steam sale when they had just published one game so far in the year. They offered compensation, which is totally the right thing to do since they are admitting their fault but at least to me that could've been avoided.
At the end of the article Ben Judd basically tries to brush aside the accusations of his predatory behavior as "well, she is my ex so (you shouldn't believe her)".
They still look bad.
At the end of the article Ben Judd basically tries to brush aside the accusations of his predatory behavior as "well, she is my ex so (you shouldn't believe her)".
They still look bad.
Their defense seems to be not knowing what power dynamics are.
I think I found their PR firm, seems about as competent as Dangen is. One dev out of one of the projects being angry and rude when he thinks he's getting stolen from compared to the guy who just tanked allegations of sexual misconduct and abuse from multiple women by saying "well i dated one of them so don't judge". True abuse at its core... right.
That was my takeaway as well. The timing of the first Medium post and those DE Dev tweets always seemed suspicious, right around the time of the Bug Fables release. Even if they had legitimate complaints and an axe to grind with Dangen, they still could have waited a little longer in order to not harm the initial sales of Bug Fables.
The Dangen Medium post mentions that Bug Fable was the third game that THE WRITER was working on as a go-between for a while before those devs decided to stick with Dangen. This could very well be a coordinated effort to damage Dangen's reputation and impact sales of Bug Fables to make an example of them that will motivate other devs to jump ship.
Dangen definitely made mistakes (which they admit in their response) and the tax situation sounds like a nightmare for everyone involved, but I found those parts of the rebuttal to be a credible explanation for what happened. The allegations against Ben Judd are an entirely different matter and I don't think the Medium post will change anyone's mind.
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I think I found their PR firm, seems about as competent as Dangen is. One dev out of one of the projects being angry and rude when he thinks he's getting stolen from compared to the guy who just tanked allegations of sexual misconduct and abuse from multiple women by saying "well i dated one of them so don't judge". True abuse at its core... right.
Or he's just some guy that thought he was nice, there's enough bad shit here to not need to invent conspiracies.
You can easily google what games that Indie Wolverine has worked with (Subnautica and mostly VR games). Not to mention, Indie PR companies are 99 percent of the time working with devs that don't have publishers, they don't do PR FOR publishers, that's..what a publisher is for lol.
...except we see that a very enthusiastic attempt was made by Dangen to hire this individual directly, so that doesn't quite wash.
From what I've read so far, it does go point by point about most of the points in the original article, and offers explanations that make quite a lot if sense (and often visual evidence) for many things. As far as rebuttals goes, this seems pretty thorough, I'm not sure what else could they do to defend their case. It certainly has a bit more evidence than "a couple of screenshots from I don't know exactly what".
This is a pretty fucked up situation for everyone involved. The truth will, as is usually the case, land somewhere in the middle, but right now Dangen's version seems at least more logically consistent at describing both parties' motives, and exposes a pattern of toxicity and insults from DE's dev not just towards Dangen but other devs. We will probably never know all of the truth, which is unfortunate because it will damage everyone's reputation, regardless of who was actually in the wrong. In the case of Dangen this may well prove fatal; whether that's a good thing or not, of course, depends on what opinion of them one may have already formed.
Edit: I didn't remember about the sexual harassment accusations; I assume they aren't addressed in their response? (they aren't in the part I've read so far at least).
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Except for the fact that (taking Dangen at their word) the video wasn't requested by them, it was requested by Kinda Funny at the last minute:
When preparing for Kinda Funny Games Showcase for Fight Knight, there was a last minute request from Kinda Funny that asked that we film and send in videos of the developer and ourselves to be featured in an opening montage for the event.
If Dangen is telling the truth here, what are they supposed to do in this situation? What did they exactly do wrong?