I wanted a sincere apology and actual meaningful consequences for the folks who greenlighted the AMA and partook in it, I am aware of the complications that apply to this particular case, but I hope to see a change for the positive eventually. As I've said previously this entire ordeal has left me feeling utterly alienated.
-
Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.
THQ Nordic parent company issues formal apology for the 8Chan AMA
- Thread starter Shard Shinjuku
- Start date
I wanted a sincere apology and actual meaningful consequences for the folks who greenlighted the AMA and partook in it, I am aware of the complications that apply to this particular case, but I hope to see a change for the positive eventually. As I've said previously this entire ordeal has left me feeling utterly alienated.
It sucks that some people still think that it was only one person who was linked to posting on 8chan. The context of this is when I watched the THQ segment on the latest Kinda Funny Games Daily video.
That they felt the need to apologize shows that this isn't completely blowing over. So it seems that people have kept up the pressure on them (hopefully their partners and contractors also weighed in, as they're caught in the middle of all this), which is good.
But on the whole, this response is pretty unsatisfying. If Reinhard can manage operations for the company that actually screwed up, he can manage an explanation and an apology. Having the CEO come down from on high to absolve his subordinates is just shielding the people who actually engaged with hate speech and child pornography.
I still won't be buying any THQ Nordic GmbH games, but at least somebody finally deigned to respond.
But on the whole, this response is pretty unsatisfying. If Reinhard can manage operations for the company that actually screwed up, he can manage an explanation and an apology. Having the CEO come down from on high to absolve his subordinates is just shielding the people who actually engaged with hate speech and child pornography.
I still won't be buying any THQ Nordic GmbH games, but at least somebody finally deigned to respond.
This is one of the most shallow "by the books" response I've seen from a company. It took them a WEEK to say the equivalent of saying nothing at all.
It's a statement made just to say they made a statement. There will be no follow-up to this. There will (probably) be no firings from this (if only because of how labor laws are in Austria). There will probably be no repercussions made to the person that is on the board of directors that took part in this.
It's about as meaningful as a YouTuber "apologizing" for a heated gaming moment.
It's a statement made just to say they made a statement. There will be no follow-up to this. There will (probably) be no firings from this (if only because of how labor laws are in Austria). There will probably be no repercussions made to the person that is on the board of directors that took part in this.
It's about as meaningful as a YouTuber "apologizing" for a heated gaming moment.
would be very interesting to see a graph of recent traffic to that particular despicable website
i'm not convinced that this was ever intended to actually generate positive PR for the company - i think the intent was to get that website trending in the news to boost its popularity
i'm not convinced that this was ever intended to actually generate positive PR for the company - i think the intent was to get that website trending in the news to boost its popularity
Seems reasonable to me. Someone fucked up. They're looking into it and they've apologised. I don't think they could really do much more.
I spoke to a relative with strong credentials and experience working in HR in an EU country, and they said that in their opinion this situation would easily meet the criteria of immediate suspension so that they could investigate (which the employer could state publicly), and very likely meet the criteria for dismissal on the grounds of gross misconduct. Were the employer compelled to go down that route.
Some snippets from a German podcast (gamespodcast.de), see also this post in the other thread:
Re Brock: "He was described to me as somebody whose personal ideology could not be farther removed from the extreme right." (heard by both, seems to come from several persons)
Re Pollice: "I have met him several times. I can not vouch for him because I do not know him very well. However, we had many interactions and he seemed to be a pleasant and open-minded person."
Re Brock: "He was described to me as somebody whose personal ideology could not be farther removed from the extreme right." (heard by both, seems to come from several persons)
Re Pollice: "I have met him several times. I can not vouch for him because I do not know him very well. However, we had many interactions and he seemed to be a pleasant and open-minded person."
yep, easily. at least in germany, you could fire someone over this.
They could, you know, actually do something.
Also they could acknowledge that the "someone fucked up" is actually multiple people doing something on purpose because that misconception still seems to be going strong, but that's probably not going to happen.
A person can be very pleasant and charismatic in public and still secretly hold hateful views.
A lot of people liked Palmer Luckey when Oculus first got huge - by all accounts, he seemed very likable and passionate, and even showed up on some Giant Bomb E3 podcasts. Literally no one had any inkling that he was funding alt-right trolls until it was reported on.
Not sure if tasteful joke.
I mean, Konami has shit work practices, but they've never had their marketing team show up on 8chan and revel in CP jokes.
This is a minor thing, but:
So it's THQ Nordic AB, the holding company is based in Sweden? How many people are actually in that company?
THQ Nordic GmbH, the publisher, is actually from Austria. If you go to their website and look at their contact information it's from Vienna. Reinhard Pollice is educated in Vienna and probably Austrian himself.
So it's THQ Nordic AB, the holding company is based in Sweden? How many people are actually in that company?
That's right. THQ Nordic AB is based in Sweden, while the THQ Nordic subsidiary is in Austria.
User Warned: Inflammatory generalizations
What I got from this is they've all already learned their lesson... because the company is based in Sweden. Great examples are obviously Swedes like PewDiePie and Notch.
I'm so convinced they know how to tackle those issues.
Next time something like this happens THQN will send a serious mail to all their employees via 8chan to remind everyone of their core values.
I'm so convinced they know how to tackle those issues.
Next time something like this happens THQN will send a serious mail to all their employees via 8chan to remind everyone of their core values.
They are saying a lot, but very little at the same time. Obviously you should condemn sites like these and learn from the colossal clusterfuck this was from the beginning, but you are no saying anything about what steps are being made to ensure this doesn't happen again.
Give insight into how this happened to begin with, the people that signed off on it, how it got planned and how the planning for similar events in the future have changed.
I feel bad for the developers associated with THQ Nordic since all of this is out of their control and could prove to be a major obstacle in making their efforts successful.
Give insight into how this happened to begin with, the people that signed off on it, how it got planned and how the planning for similar events in the future have changed.
I feel bad for the developers associated with THQ Nordic since all of this is out of their control and could prove to be a major obstacle in making their efforts successful.
"We're sorry but not really. Please look forward for Biomutant, releasing soon!"
Keep seeing people saying that Phillipp Brock and Reinhard Pollice legally can't be fired on the first offense or something. What are those claims based on?
Anything Google has pointed me at has basically said the same thing, see quote.
Eurofound
Disloyalty to the employer, persistent neglect of duties, incompetence with regard to work, theft, falsified qualification, among others.
Firing them immediately is something THQ may or may not be legally able to do.
But by all accounts, THQ can certainly give notice immediately, and have them out of the company within X months.
Whether that is something THQ has done or are planning to do, they do not seem willing to publicly communicate it, for some reason that I don't understand.
But I know that doesn't necessarily mean that they won't fire at least someone. CD Projekt never mentioned or hinted that they were firing the GOG guy. That Eurogamer article was probably the first time people knew about that.
Anything Google has pointed me at has basically said the same thing, see quote.
Eurofound
These sites(pdf) Google considered relevant to my search also say that you can only immediately fire someone if valid justification is given.
Disloyalty to the employer, persistent neglect of duties, incompetence with regard to work, theft, falsified qualification, among others.
Firing them immediately is something THQ may or may not be legally able to do.
But by all accounts, THQ can certainly give notice immediately, and have them out of the company within X months.
Whether that is something THQ has done or are planning to do, they do not seem willing to publicly communicate it, for some reason that I don't understand.
But I know that doesn't necessarily mean that they won't fire at least someone. CD Projekt never mentioned or hinted that they were firing the GOG guy. That Eurogamer article was probably the first time people knew about that.
Last edited:
And americans elected trump, so whats your point? It is stupid to generlize countries like that.
Maybe it's because I just noticed a while ago that they had scrolled past an image named hans_judenjaeger.jpg (that would be Hans Jewhunter in English) during the AMA, which I think the people holding the AMA might find easier to notice than I would as they may be native German speakers, but I'm wondering why they specified that. Presuming this apology actually took a week to make and they didn't just shit it out right now, there's presumably some purpose to this statement, right?
Is there any activity going on in THQ GmbH in Austria, where the AMA was actually carried out?
Did they just think Sweden sounded better and wanted to emphasize that?
Is that to emphasize that the parent company is taking responsibility for what their subsidiaries do?
If this is focusing on the holding company, I'm wondering how much power they actually have to investigate and make changes to the subsidiary, including whether or not they actually have the people to do so.
It may be the reason why it took a week for this statement to come out. If the Swedish holding company is investigating the antics of their Austrian subsidiary, there could potentially be a lot of weird things we don't know about that they have to dig through. But the statement definitely reads like they're saying "We, the Swedish holding company, are sorry our Austrian office made this fuck-up and we're taking steps to make sure nothing of this magnitude ever happens again."
Yeah, I'm a bit confused by EU-ERA claims that you can never suspend/fire senior employees; of course you can, just be prepared to defend that decision in court. Unless there is more going on that we can't see (like correspondence proving that higher management knew all the ramifications of these antics and it's not just one or two persons), a reasonable judge would uphold the dismissal.
They talk the talk but lets see if THQ Nordic can walk the walk. I really think the two ring leaders need to be fired - at best they're incompetent and at worse hold some pretty appalling views.
But they did indeed demote senior personell to cleaning jobs or manufacturing line jobs.
Thought they might ride it out in silence, but now let's see what they do.
If they just "investigate" and then nothing happens their address of the situation will read insincere as hell.
If they just "investigate" and then nothing happens their address of the situation will read insincere as hell.
Firings aren't the only thing they can do here. They could outline measures they have in place to prevent incidents like this from happening again and to combat the damage that they may have caused. Policies, training, charitable donations, and so on.
This statement mentions an investigation which might lead to those, but it in itself isn't a solution.
To be fair, we kind of know the first one? Unless you mean the man behind the screen name.
This statement mentions an investigation which might lead to those, but it in itself isn't a solution.
To be fair, we kind of know the first one? Unless you mean the man behind the screen name.
Patrick Klepek has addressed this statement over at waypoint
https://waypoint.vice.com/en_us/art...ver-8chan-incident-isnt-worthy-of-forgiveness
https://waypoint.vice.com/en_us/art...ver-8chan-incident-isnt-worthy-of-forgiveness
love that pklep is going for the throat
https://waypoint.vice.com/en_us/art...ver-8chan-incident-isnt-worthy-of-forgiveness
https://waypoint.vice.com/en_us/art...ver-8chan-incident-isnt-worthy-of-forgiveness
Incompetence can be a perfectly valid reason here. And their own words that they didn't do their "due diligence" can be used against those employees to show incompetence and negligence of their duty for hosting an AMA on a site known for doxxing, nazism, real and fictional CP. That they openly associated with this site has dragged the THQ name through the mud and made it a PR disaster.
Last edited:
Thq endorses pedophelia as far as im concerned as the two heads involved made pretty clear in their conduct they understood the crowd they were enjoying. I will continue to boycott pedo supporters and make it known as long as the guys at the top have a job. Others shoukd do the same.
Oh look, a games journalist actually covering this whole story with updates too! Would be nice if other journalists would jump in and cover this too. What? They're too busy making Anthem articles and articles that talk about which Pokemon is blah, blah, blah? Well okay I guess.
Why do they need to do an internal investigation when they already know exactly who was responsible for this, how, and why it happened?
This apology fucking sucks.
Looks like I'll stay not buying THQN products.
This apology fucking sucks.
Looks like I'll stay not buying THQN products.
I have a lot of respect for Patrick and how he hasn't let this go.
The mystery is how the heck did this thing happen and didn't get vetoed.
Everyone here (that's not silent on the matter) seems to be acting like this is a simple case of "pr guy did bad, fire him". Well, Imran Khan was pretty sure this thing got approved by the overall department, which, assuming he was correct, invalidates that. If one person came up with this stunt concept and ran it with some friends but without asking other employees, that's one thing. But overall agreement on it paints a completely different picture. The problem at this point is not limited to one person.
Happy to see Patrick pulling apart the apology so quickly. Hopefully he continues to keep on top of this.
