Game company CEO under fire for sharing video of a kitten being abused on twitter

[mr_raccoon]

Warning: details about the abuse is in the article

Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford under fire for tweets about animal abuse - Dexerto

[TobinL]

Well I wasn’t gonna preorder Borderlands 3 anyway.
Probably will wait till it I can get a cheap steam sale deal.

[fuzzyfungus]

I’m shocked, shocked, that the guy behind Aliens: Colonial Marines and Duke Nukem Forever is kind of terrible.

[Magdalene]

Yeah, I haven’t Pre-Ordered but I do have the rest of the franchise.

The video thing is terrible, but I didn’t even know about this:

Wade Callender, former general counsel for Gearbox, accused CEO Randy Pitchford of leaving a USB stick full of his own “personal collection of ‘underage’ pornography" at a Medieval Times Dinner and Tournament location not far from the studio’s headquarters in 2014.

Additionally, Callender alleged that both Pitchford and his wife were draining finances from the company to fund what an ongoing lawsuit called “Peacock Parties,” where adult male partygoers "reportedly exposed themselves to minors, to the amusement of Randy Pitchford.

WTF??

[fuzzyfungus]

I’m not at all clear on what’s going on at Gearbox HQ; but the situation between Callender and Pitchford is deeply skeezy. (Pitchford asserts that the pornography in question featured an 18 year old and he was interested in it because of the magic trick. I’ve found no evidence of any of these proceedings taking a turn for the criminal so the first half of that might be true)

The togetherness issues with the lawyer have been going on for a while; the fight with the former VP of business development(and voice actor of the hapless robot) is newer; but also, um, flattering.

[Magdalene]

@fuzzyfungus

(Pitchford asserts that the pornography in question featured an 18 year old and he was interested in it because of the magic trick. I’ve found no evidence of any of these proceedings taking a turn for the criminal so the first half of that might be true)

Yeah that’s not a “magic trick”…

Bizarrely enough, Pitchford corroborates some of the story’s details by appearing on a podcast that went live one day after Callender’s suit was filed. On the December 22 episode of The Piff Pod, Pitchford talks at length about porn that he enjoys watching, including “camgirl” pornography, in which a host exposes themself to a live feed and takes requests and financial tips from consumers. Pitchford explained that he was “a consumer of this content.” He confirmed that he copied a specific video “to this memory stick” to, as he describes it, “work out the method” of how a camgirl host faked the act of female ejaculation. (Be warned: he describes how the video looks in particularly graphic detail.)

Legality aside, that shit does not belong at a work party, or anywhere near a workplace. Dude sounds like just another huge tool who thinks he’s an edgy libertine, but is actually a nasty creeper.

Edit: Which is exactly what I would have expected from the creator of the games mentioned in your above post.

[TobinL]

@Magdalene

WTF??

eww.
And I like Borderlands for doing some things right. Driving home that the player characters while fighting for a better world they are not necessarily good guys. The PCs and NPCs have a varied range of body types and even the female PCs while easy on the eyes have more physical fit body types rather than bimbo eye candy for boys body types. Then there are the gay NPCs who are just there and nobody hates on them about it or even cares about it.

[Magdalene]

@TobinL

And I like Borderlands for doing some things right. Driving home that the player characters while fighting for a better world they are not necessarily good guys. The PCs and NPCs have a varied range of body types and even the female PCs while easy on the eyes have more physical fit body types rather than bimbo eye candy for boys body types. Then there are the gay NPCs who are just there and nobody hates on them about it or even cares about it.

Yeah. It’s not entirely outside of “game norms”, but it does manage to be subersive in little ways. On top of that, the quests were and the fps gameplay were genuinely fun.

My SO and I played through on multiple characters, and we were planning on buying 4 copies for the whole family now that my girls game with us.

I’ll be watching Gearbox to see if they get right, but I gotta say I’d rather not contribute to a person like Pitchford, so I’m feeling pretty conflicted.

[fuzzyfungus]

@Magdalene

Legality aside, that shit does not belong at a work party, or anywhere near a workplace.

No argument there. For the sake of hypothetical potential victims I hope that Pitchford is merely an HR nightmare left unchecked(though I wouldn’t bet on it; people rarely become radically worse exclusively for work; especially at levels where they aren’t just peons laboring under a supervisor’s orders and ‘company culture’) rather than this way all the time;but he definitely seems to be an HR nightmare left unchecked; with some potential accounting irregularities if any of the other allegations hold up.