Arena Net Firing: Games Media Rally To Defend Fired Guild Wars Dev

d_20

Here's a discussion by Laymen Gaming: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IZYm1c9Jh4

What do you think about this?

Phry

d_20 said:

Here's a discussion by Laymen Gaming: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IZYm1c9Jh4

What do you think about this?

they are spot on as usual.
Arenanet didn't really have a choice, they had to fire them as their behaviour was beyond disgraceful, frankly people like that we don't need in game development.

Warlyx

im sorry but they deserve it , u dont want ppl working on your company that treat customers like that , and i dont see the issue with the original twitt to be fair....it was just an opinon , we have seen WAYYYYYYY WORSE than that

Chimborazo

I live in a country where is way harder to be fired (even when it shouldn't). I'm fine with the system when we're talking about extremely wealthy people: I'm not ok with the whole #MeToo thing for example , but all the people involved have enough millions to retire so it's not that big of a deal.
Problem is when somebody can't retire right away after being fired and won't be able to find a new job. If you can stomach the fired person being dragged down into poverty (bringing his children along) is fine for me, but if you can't stomach that and you go with public financial aid, I wouldn't be ok with the whole firing thing.
Wouldn't like seeing my taxes used to support somebody who was doing just fine before some little bitches started overreacting.
Fine her, change her role, but don't put her in the streets with such nonchalance if you might end up needing to take her away from that street with public money. 

But again, I live in a different country 

peanutabc

She acted extremely stupid and unprofessional on a twitter account that listed ArenaNet in her bio.

Typical "men are the problem" woman going off her retweets and political views. Idiot clearly needed a reality check and she got one by the looks of it.

She has no remorse or anything over what she says when clearly in the wrong and puts blame on everything other than herself. No one is oppressing or calling you our because of a gender, they're just trying to start a conversation with you for goodness sake.

Her earlier tweets about infinity war are the icing on the cake imo. Seriously needs some therapy and mental help.

Kyleran

I suspect these two employees weren't all that well thought of internally within the firm, so when this situation presented itself ANET used it as a solid "for cause" reason to terminate them. (As it's not always so easy to fire people here in the US at times.)

Not sure if a typical internet pissing contest is a good reason to terminate an employee, especially if they were otherwise a solid performer. 

I don't agree with her remarks, she was unnecessarily snarky and rude for no discernable reason.  Not sure if she had previous posting history with the person she lashed at, or if her comments were just some random over reaction to fans in general.

Perhaps she was drinking too much that day, and ran her mouth off, who can tell.

As others noted, if a person is going to use their real life identity and employer, they are a defacto representative of the company.

In this situation one must be very careful in expressing their personal opinions on any topic, but especially if responding to customers or about the company and its products.

My employer would likely have treated me very similarly if I commented as she did, hence I never identify who I work for, nor do I ever opine on the firm, its competitors and certainly not it's customers,  even when I'm anonymously posting as I do here.

We are regularly reminded and cautioned on how we are expected to behave when "representing" the company and are actually prohibited by law from commenting on financial forums about the firm's products unless we publically identify we are employees, though we are not required to use our real life identities.  (I think)

So the Laymen did a good job in presenting the facts of the situation without imparting a lot of bias to it.

But the stuttering, disjointed method of presentation was almost painful to watch, and YouTube did something I'd not seen before, actually interrupted the video about a third of the way in with a commercial, which annoyed me as well.

No idea what the product was, I was angrily waiting for the 10 second timer to count down so I could skip and move on. 

Phry

Gorwe said:

Again, they(actually she, but meh) deserved it. But there is something oddly eerie and disturbing about getting fired over the content of your own private accounts / every day life.

It wasn't really a private account, she was representing Arenanet, in a discussion about GW2, if she had not been doing so then that might have been a different matter, she was using her position in her job at Arenanet however in order to browbeat on others, as such she was directly bringing the company and the game into disrepute by her offensive personal attacks on someone who had gone out of their way to be polite, her reactions were nothing short of bizarre, though honestly the more you hear about the woman the less likeable she becomes, she even commented that TB being dead was good because it meant he couldn't cause any harm anymore, what a piece of work she is, i mean,  to disagree with someones viewpoint is one thing, but being happy they were dead, thats just nasty.
It wouldn't surprise me in the least if other developers were more than slightly reluctant to hire her.

Quizzical

If she hadn't given out her real-life identity, no one would have tracked her down and she wouldn't have gotten fired.  That's the real lesson to be learned here:  don't put your real name on anything online other than for professional purposes.

So long as you're not doing anything that interferes with your ability to work during your normal hours, what you do on your own time should be none of your employer's business.  If she were being a jerk to customers on the job as an official ArenaNet representative, then sure, that's a firing offense.  But the tendency of social media trolls to try to get people fired from their real-life jobs is poisonous to society.

ananit

Phry said:

Gorwe said:

Again, they(actually she, but meh) deserved it. But there is something oddly eerie and disturbing about getting fired over the content of your own private accounts / every day life.

It wasn't really a private account, she was representing Arenanet, in a discussion about GW2, if she had not been doing so then that might have been a different matter, she was using her position in her job at Arenanet however in order to browbeat on others, as such she was directly bringing the company and the game into disrepute by her offensive personal attacks on someone who had gone out of their way to be polite, her reactions were nothing short of bizarre, though honestly the more you hear about the woman the less likeable she becomes, she even commented that TB being dead was good because it meant he couldn't cause any harm anymore, what a piece of work she is, i mean,  to disagree with someones viewpoint is one thing, but being happy they were dead, thats just nasty.
It wouldn't surprise me in the least if other developers were more than slightly reluctant to hire her.

they knew how she was before they hired her though, she's been fired before for the same kind of thing. they probably expected her to behave somehow, at least in public areas such as social media platforms.

being talented and despicable surely puts your future employer in an uneasy situation

lahnmir

Something with a turtle and a scorpion I guess.

/Cheers,
Lahnmir

Nepheth

Gorwe said:

Again, they(actually she, but meh) deserved it. But there is something oddly eerie and disturbing about getting fired over the content of your own private accounts / every day life.

It is not a private account though. If you wanna express everything comes to your mind freely you shouldn't be using a twitter account at first place. Use your facebook or instagram account and make it private. Twitter is a public place. Everyone can see your tweets and post about them. If you're using your own identity with the name of the company you work with you're responsible with everything you say because you're representing that company. And on top of that she wasn't even talking about some private issue. She was directly talking about Gw2 and arguing with a respectable customer. She went too far and deserved everything from that point on.

Ungood

Quizzical said:

If she hadn't given out her real-life identity, no one would have tracked her down and she wouldn't have gotten fired.  That's the real lesson to be learned here:  don't put your real name on anything online other than for professional purposes.

So long as you're not doing anything that interferes with your ability to work during your normal hours, what you do on your own time should be none of your employer's business.  If she were being a jerk to customers on the job as an official ArenaNet representative, then sure, that's a firing offense.  But the tendency of social media trolls to try to get people fired from their real-life jobs is poisonous to society.

Yup, the real lesson here is never mix your personal life with your professional life.

If you have a "professional" presence on Social Media, make a Professional Profile, that your employer, clients, and the like can look at and see what a great employee you are.

And keep all your personal stuff set on private, your circle small, and don't mention where you work.

Cleffy

I think most big companies have the "Be careful with what you post on social media" meeting. If you are a person who's posts negatively affect their company, you bet your getting fired. Just recently was a guy who called the cops on a black woman visiting her apartment complex's pool. He got fired even though he didn't post anything to social media or was at the company.

Mendel

A clear case of 'free speech having consequences'.  She spoke freely.  Consequences happened.

Chimborazo

She was definitely stupid and punishing her is right (firing her out of nowhere maybe it's too drastical).

I don't agree with this "reputation" thing, I mean: it didn't really hurt Anet, it's hard for me to imagine that somebody would not buy a product from a company (something complicate as an MMO) because of this situation, everyone just complains cause they like to complain and jumping on the shame train of the week, but seriously: who changes the idea of playing (and pay for) GW2 over this episode?

One thing for sure tho: social networks used this way are dumb, especially Twitter whose purpose is putting you on a pedestal and inviting you to share your thoughts about stuff like you were actually paid to do that in a talkshow. 

Albatroes

So some people can't accept the consequence matching the action? Go figure....sounds like a bunch of kids who haven't lived a real life yet. Game developers aren't above misconduct, regardless of who they are. If things can't carry on without them, it just shows how weak the team was from the beginning.

Phry

Mendel said:

A clear case of 'free speech having consequences'.  She spoke freely.  Consequences happened.

I don't think this is really a free speech issue, making public and personal attacks on others however without good reason is closer, although i've also heard the #getwokegobroke term being used with regard to this incident. The interesting thing though is that the 'usual suspects' in MSM are trying to spin the story around to her being the victim rather than the offender, honestly the mental gymnastics involved are truly worthy of a perfect 10

maskedweasel

Phry said:

Mendel said:

A clear case of 'free speech having consequences'.  She spoke freely.  Consequences happened.

I don't think this is really a free speech issue, making public and personal attacks on others however without good reason is closer, although i've also heard the #getwokegobroke term being used with regard to this incident. The interesting thing though is that the 'usual suspects' in MSM are trying to spin the story around to her being the victim rather than the offender, honestly the mental gymnastics involved are truly worthy of a perfect 10

Well, in her defense, there were definitely other ways to handle it where she wouldn't have lost her job. She could have issued an apology, been put in some kind of training, and/or been requested to make her private account truly private, and if she declined to do that, then a firing would be in order....

It does fall into "free speech" in the sense that people believe that NOW they can say whatever they want, because that's the climate right now, and then are surprised when they get fired. It's unsurprising... but what's more interesting to me is the lack of common sense and compassion for others that so many people seem to lack.  I can't see someone snapping over something so trivial, on a platform that has controls in place specifically to deal with unwanted criticism.

Keep in mind, she didn't have to respond at all, she could have blocked him, but it was more important for her to make a point than to deescalate the situation that she caused, and that's where what she says incurs consequences. 

I don't see a lot of spin on what happened, I think it's been reported pretty accurately in most of the cases I've read.  

Quizzical

Phry said:

Mendel said:

A clear case of 'free speech having consequences'.  She spoke freely.  Consequences happened.

I don't think this is really a free speech issue, making public and personal attacks on others however without good reason is closer, although i've also heard the #getwokegobroke term being used with regard to this incident. The interesting thing though is that the 'usual suspects' in MSM are trying to spin the story around to her being the victim rather than the offender, honestly the mental gymnastics involved are truly worthy of a perfect 10

From a legal perspective, free speech means that the government can't impose consequences for what she said.  That doesn't mean that no one else can.  Still, it's far preferable to be fired from your job because your employer decided to punish you than to spend a year in prison because the government decided to punish you.

Private entities also have some market restraints that limit their ability to impose consequences for speech that they don't like.  A company that is far too quick to fire employees will have difficulty hiring and retaining the talent they need.  If they go way too far overboard, they could even face a public boycott.  Additionally, once they fire her, there's nothing more that they can do if she keeps saying things they don't like.  Governments don't have that kind of natural restraint, which is why the freedom of speech preventing your government from punishing you for what you say is so important even if others can.

MadFrenchie

I think her fatal mistake was taking the customer's tweet and retweeting it to try and put him on blast publicly.  From what I understand, that was the post that got her fired.

In that sense, I agree.  Even if you disagree vehemently with a customer, trying to make them a public punching bag is a huge no-no.

Hariken

Never ever use your real name on social media sites is the lesson here.

Sephiroso

maskedweasel said:

Phry said:

Mendel said:

A clear case of 'free speech having consequences'.  She spoke freely.  Consequences happened.

I don't think this is really a free speech issue, making public and personal attacks on others however without good reason is closer, although i've also heard the #getwokegobroke term being used with regard to this incident. The interesting thing though is that the 'usual suspects' in MSM are trying to spin the story around to her being the victim rather than the offender, honestly the mental gymnastics involved are truly worthy of a perfect 10

Well, in her defense, there were definitely other ways to handle it where she wouldn't have lost her job. She could have issued an apology, been put in some kind of training, and/or been requested to make her private account truly private, and if she declined to do that, then a firing would be in order....

It does fall into "free speech" in the sense that people believe that NOW they can say whatever they want, because that's the climate right now, and then are surprised when they get fired. It's unsurprising... but what's more interesting to me is the lack of common sense and compassion for others that so many people seem to lack.  I can't see someone snapping over something so trivial, on a platform that has controls in place specifically to deal with unwanted criticism.

Keep in mind, she didn't have to respond at all, she could have blocked him, but it was more important for her to make a point than to deescalate the situation that she caused, and that's where what she says incurs consequences. 

I don't see a lot of spin on what happened, I think it's been reported pretty accurately in most of the cases I've read.  

Just based off the incident itself, her having similar blowups in the past at another job she worked for, and her statements made since, she is completely and utterly unapologetic so I could see her turning down such an offer by Anet even if they did offer one to her(and we don't know if they did or not)

Also, it definitely isn't being reported accurate in most places. Most places paints her as the victim and that she was attacked by Derrior. It's madness.

Slapshot1188

Watching the vid from the OP now.  Unbelievable.  She must have been such a pleasure to work with that I'm sure her co-workers must really be broken up.

That people support her just shows how screwed up our society has gotten.  Rock, Paper Shotgun article?  WTF?  Kotaku?  WTF?  

Other companies should apply equal common sense.   I mean.. why does Rian Johnson get to call Star Wars fans "manbabies"?

When you work for a company and are speaking to customers of that company or about the products of that company you SHOULD be expected to behave in a manner that represents the company well.  

ananit

MadFrenchie said:

I think her fatal mistake was taking the customer's tweet and retweeting it to try and put him on blast publicly.  From what I understand, that was the post that got her fired.

In that sense, I agree.  Even if you disagree vehemently with a customer, trying to make them a public punching bag is a huge no-no.

especially when said customer is partnered with the company you work for and even has an NPC named after him in the very game you work on.
she then proceeds to call him a rando asshat, pulls the sexism victim card while she is the offender and people start calling her out on her completely out of proportion response to a normal tweet.
it's like a gift that keep on giving for the public and a total PR nightmare for the company.

LackingMMO

Free speech is one thing but when your speech represents a company it isn't free anymore, its a reflection of that company. When that company is trying to retain a certain image you cant react to customers in the way she did. 

I saw nothing wrong with her opinion about story telling in mmos, in fact I agree in part with it, her response however is really played out and just exhausted by now honestly. One thing to note too is if this is how she is acting openly then how was she behind the scenes? Might have been the final nail in the coffin, the perfect opportunity to cut the cord.

Darksworm

Bye, Felisha...

I too, am getting tired of females running to the sexism card instantly...

A long with other "groups" that people coddle.  It is making it impossible to communicate with people online.

Part of the reason why I'm not on Social media is because of the reflex attacks by people who pull the race, gender, or sexual orientation card in response to fairly mundane comments in discussions.  It's become unbearable.

I was raised to treat females with respect.  I was not raised to take abuse from them with a smile on my face.