Chris Roberts, creator of the "Star Citizen" game in potential legal battle with gaming site "The Escapist" after "slandar article" (kind of effort not really)
64 2015-10-04 by SamMee514
So The Escapist writer Lizzy Finnegan wrote this article quoting multiple ex-employees claiming bad business practices and mis-management of crowd funds as well as discriminatory hiring. The following are excerpts from the article.
On discrimination:
It was also alleged that Roberts' wife and Cloud Imperium Games Vice President of Marketing Sandi Gardiner enforced discriminatory hiring practices. CS1 reported that they were instructed to, first, check the education field on a prospective employee's resume. If too much time had passed, Gardiner reportedly informed people not to hire them, because "they may be over 40, which makes them a protected class and harder to fire." It was also claimed that Gardiner used race as a determining factor in selecting employees, allegedly once saying "We aren't hiring her. We aren't hiring a black girl."
On Roberts' wife:
[Sandi Gardiner] would write emails with so much profanity. She would call people stupid, retard, faggot. Accuse men of not having balls.
On mis-management of company money:
CS5 stated that Gardiner would be out of the country on vacation or auditioning for movie or television roles, allegedly paid for with company money, but would post images of the office - taken by another employee - to make it appear as though she was at work. Multiple sources confided that several videos were filmed using company resources and employees, both in Cloud Imperium Games' offices and in the couple's home.
And apparently they only have $8 million left from their original $90 million crowdfunded:
"They've spent $82 million dollars, and what is there to show for that? There's a demo, a racing demo, a single first person shooter level, and an area where you can walk around. For $82 million," CS2 stated. Most of the sources feel this is the reason for continued fundraising through the website - to "extend the dream" for as long as possible. They also feel this is the motivation behind the inflated pricing on digital products that, at this moment, allegedly don't exist.
Roberts responded today with potential legal action, as well as a long-winded response to the article where he called it filled with "a bunch of conjecture, falsehoods and opinions of disgruntled ex-employees enflamed (sic?) by Derek Smart’s personal quest to destroy Star Citizen." Smart seems to be this guy who really, really wants this game to fail.
Somefuckinghow gamergate/feminism gets dragged into the mix with quotes from twitter. Robers writes:
It’s notable that this account was interacting with and supporting Derek Smart when he was complaining about being blocked and reported as a harasser by two huge GG targets; Randi Harper and Briana Wu, which was another Derek Smart self-announced drama (he loves to play the victim, which he did when we refunded him publically sharing his refund email, claiming we were trying to silence him. We weren’t – we strongly believe in free speech and allow many dissenting opinions on our forums as long as they stay within standards of decency. You don’t keep someone as part of your community who is demanding you run the development differently or else he’ll sue you, especially someone who is plainly using the opportunity to attack Star Citizen for self-promotion).
He has just updated the post with potential legal action and a five-page response re-hosted here in case it is taken down
He concludes the post with this:
if you took the time to research this you will find that it is a common comment and that the “noise” that has been generated is really from a very small number of people and some quite bitter ex-employees.
The Escapist responds to the community in this article where it goes over their position on the matter.
On accusations of "factual errors":
If factual errors exist in our report, we will happily retract and correct. But as it stands, the report presented two sides, the allegations and observations of former and current employees and the response to them from Chris Roberts for CIG. We understand that former employees may have an axe to grind, hence the need to get several of them to say the same thing. We also understand that there will be people who are happy with CIG and enjoy their employment. Our job was to present both sides and let you, the reader, make your own determination.
Lel:
We do plan on taking Chris Roberts up on his offer to tour the various CIG studios and talk to current employees about the development of Star Citizen. We will be setting that up soon.
So yeah. Some shit is going down.
54 comments