-
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.
-
We have made minor adjustments to how the search bar works on ResetEra. You can read about the changes here.
Riot Games tried to poach Mike Z (Skullgirls, Indivisible) from Lab Zero
- Thread starter stumblebee
- Start date
Suuuuuper tacky of this guy to be posting these emails. Riot is just doing business in this case, keep your shit to yourself. Wouldn't be surprised if more than one company put him on a no-hire list after seeing this
"We need more transparency and accountability in this industry"
"Oh how unprofessional to say publicly you are refusing a job in a company with on going harassment where the harassers still lead free"
"Oh how unprofessional to say publicly you are refusing a job in a company with on going harassment where the harassers still lead free"
Where is this narrative of Mike Z being full of himself coming from? He has very specify tastes and opinions when it come to fighting games but from what I've seen, he always backs up what he says with gameplay reasoning.
More importantly, he's willing to accept that people don't agree with him. I've seen him encourage people to play the games they like and not harass others.
More importantly, he's willing to accept that people don't agree with him. I've seen him encourage people to play the games they like and not harass others.
This is true. Mike Z cares more about player freedom than accessibility. Not that he doesn't care about accessibility at all, but he's not really trying to make fighting games easier. He's more about improving the user experience.
That's a big leap -- my point was that any other recruiter could be concerned about reaching out to him because he obviously doesn't take private matters like employment offers seriously. Maybe Nintendo or Sony or whoever some day has a secret fighting game they're working on and wants him to help out but doesn't want that info out there. Airing this sort of thing could prevent them from even trying because they can't be sure he won't post about it. It's an unprofessional thing to do even if his heart was in the right place.
No, Mike is just stupid. I wish him luck finding another job if his current one doesn't work out, because publicizing another company's email and burning a million bridges is CERTAINLY going to boost his chances to further his career, right? There were a million different ways that he could have gotten his point across instead of this way. Just completely unprofessional and I definitely wouldn't hire someone like that.
I'm more confused on how you don't understand why he's an idiot. This would be one of the main things to not do if there were a "Things to not do if you want a future job" 101 class.
Yep. Dude put in a ton of work on just continual improvements to skullgirls's training and tutorial modes.
Because Riot is superprofessional with their face-farting higher ups.
Mike is talented enough to get hired if he ever needs to, possibly even by a more flexible company. Many people still get hired or kept in this industry for much worse (i.e. Riot).
Last edited:
Good for him in all honesty. He's made a name for himself and is massively talented. Wouldn't want to hear it go to waste with him being in that kinda environment.
Mike Z does not need luck finding another job developing games. There are very few Western devs in the fighting game genre on his level. Very, very few.
Face farter is still employed, so clearly it isn't that hard to get employment if somebody really needs you.
I think Seth Killian was the lead but he left the company a while ago for unknown reasons. So they're shopping to replace him it seems.
EDIT: unkown reasons being he's working for Epic Games now apparently
Last edited:
OP
OP
Probably not. They've been doing the R&D on the project for a while and are just now kicking development into gear.
All we know is that they are all still working on it.
(This is Tom Cannon, one of the founders of the RT studio)
It should also be noted that Mike doesn't necessarily want to go back to working at a huge company again. I remember him mentioning it during the DLC campaign for Skullgirls, but he loves where he is and being able to be a creative lead on a game and seeing people playing a game in tournament he created. He's a lead programmer with years of experience. Skullgirls isn't his first game. I recall him talking about helping develop Star Wars Battlefront II, and some of the Lord of the Rings games.
I don't think he's worried about burning bridges at Riot.
(Granted my info is a couple years old since it comes from previous Salty and crowdfund campaign streams, so things could always change I guess).
I don't think he's worried about burning bridges at Riot.
(Granted my info is a couple years old since it comes from previous Salty and crowdfund campaign streams, so things could always change I guess).
Last edited:
I remember him saying stuff along those lines about his time at a big publisher back in the day. Basically he's able to make the stuff he wants in the way he wants being where he is now.
People need to understand that its not about burning bridges with Riot, but burning bridges in general and giving a bad example.
It was unprofessional what he did. You can hate Riot, but it doesnt make Mike's move less unprofessional or ok.
He could mention on twitter he got a job offer, do not like work for companies that treat employees badly and it would be enough, but he mocked and posted email from HR rep, which is a no go. Generally the mail he got is not from CEO, is not COO, but just some HR rep trying to do his/her job.
In the end what achieved is this thread, Riot wont care, burnt bridges and some HR rep will have a very bad day that their job sucks.
It was unprofessional what he did. You can hate Riot, but it doesnt make Mike's move less unprofessional or ok.
He could mention on twitter he got a job offer, do not like work for companies that treat employees badly and it would be enough, but he mocked and posted email from HR rep, which is a no go. Generally the mail he got is not from CEO, is not COO, but just some HR rep trying to do his/her job.
In the end what achieved is this thread, Riot wont care, burnt bridges and some HR rep will have a very bad day that their job sucks.
I don't get the point of this. Recruitment pitches are completely normal, why put such an email on blast in public? Seems really unprofessional. I get recruitment emails from other companies fairly often, I don't rush to publish those emails on Twitter in some sort of weird effort to expose that recruitment exists. Hell, if I did that I would expect to be disciplined by my current employer.
The point is not expose that the recruitment exists. Not sure how you missed the entire reasoning.
Mike was in the right here by not taking the job but he did in the most unprofessional way possible which doesn't surprise me, dude's ego knows no bounds. I don't think I can find the tweet but I remember someone on Twitter a couple years ago talking about how great UNIST/UNIEL is at teaching new players and as a solid fighting game and Mike Z quote tweeting something like "Why are you playing this instead of Skullgirls?"
Don't see anyone calling him an idiot, just unprofessional. Which it is, and being unprofessional just seems to be part of Mike's personality.
Edit: Nevermind, one user posted about him being an idiot, which I don't agree. Mike is just up his own ass.
Damn, that"s a great catch if they want to make a fighting game. I had no idea lol!
This thread shows why nothing changes in gaming in general. Calling out the abusive and toxic people in gaming just makes YOU the enemy, unprofessional, blacklisted etc because the abuser made some people's favorite games or them being a corporation somehow excuses them even when the perpetrator still works and runs the place.
But Mike Z needs to be taken down a peg because reasons.
Yeah, a bunch of weird hot takes in here. Mike Z is in a position where he's free to comment on this because he doesn't work for or need to work for Riot.
Dude is his own boss...for the games he makes himself...?
Indivisible comes out next month, the Skullgirls Mobile game is constantly being updated and is very successful for them and SG weeklies and tournaments are still going strong worldwide...
what am I missing here?
This is just a weird thread in general.
The HR professionals at Riot wouldn't be doing their job if they didn't approach talent like Mike Zaimont to join their team, and there's nothing wrong with headhunting talent. Similarly, there's nothing wrong with Mike declining it and making the tweets, especially considering he gave a shout-out to Rising Thunder for their great work.
There's really nothing weird/bad here at all, the real story is that Mike Zaimont wouldn't want to work for Riot due to their handling of their COO situation, which isn't very surprising.
The HR professionals at Riot wouldn't be doing their job if they didn't approach talent like Mike Zaimont to join their team, and there's nothing wrong with headhunting talent. Similarly, there's nothing wrong with Mike declining it and making the tweets, especially considering he gave a shout-out to Rising Thunder for their great work.
There's really nothing weird/bad here at all, the real story is that Mike Zaimont wouldn't want to work for Riot due to their handling of their COO situation, which isn't very surprising.
While his response could come off as unprofessional, taking into account the guy's position, and even if he took the potential perception of unprofessionalism into account himself, I don't think he cares. Lab Zero is still doing very well, and he clearly has no interest in moving on to a company he basically doesn't run. He has experience few people in the industry in the west have. You'd have to provide an obscene amount of money to poach him. Mike probably wouldn't have aired this publicly were it not for the specific issues he wanted to highlight with Riot, which is entirely understandable because the behaviour he highlighted is what the actual fuck levels of nasty.
I'd say he's fairly justified in doing this. The hot takes about professionalism are kinda bizarre, to be frank.
I'd say he's fairly justified in doing this. The hot takes about professionalism are kinda bizarre, to be frank.
Seriously. The amount of people caring if he burns bridges is weird. It's his career and no one here is his life coach.
This pretty weird, as you'd think someone in the industry calling out a giant company specifically on issues of harassment and poor workplace behavior would be right up Era's Alley. Which leads me to believe people's issue is with Mike Z himself, which I don't understand.
Screw all the tone-policing pearl-clutchers.
More people should be aware of Riot games' leadership. Good on MikeZ.
More people should be aware of Riot games' leadership. Good on MikeZ.