ExcatlyThe 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.
So it's THQ Nordic AB, the holding company is based in Sweden? How many people are actually in that company?
To be fair, we kind of know the first one? Unless you mean the man behind the screen name.
The witch-hunt continues.
Why do you want to find the people who did this and publicly humiliate them so badly ? None of you knows the details yet you act like you know exactly what THQ should do. Maybe it was a legitimate mistake. You're filled with resentment for people you know nothing about.
All of this is kinda ironic for a "redemption" website
The witch-hunt continues.
Why do you want to find the people who did this and publicly humiliate them so badly ? None of you knows the details yet you act like you know exactly what THQ should do. Maybe it was a legitimate mistake.
You're filled with resentment for people you know nothing about.
All of this is kinda ironic for a "redemption" website
The witch-hunt continues.
Why do you want to find the people who did this and publicly humiliate them so badly ? None of you knows the details yet you act like you know exactly what THQ should do. Maybe it was a legitimate mistake. You're filled with resentment for people you know nothing about.
All of this is kinda ironic for a "redemption" website
The witch-hunt continues.
Why do you want to find the people who did this and publicly humiliate them so badly ? None of you knows the details yet you act like you know exactly what THQ should do. Maybe it was a legitimate mistake. You're filled with resentment for people you know nothing about.
All of this is kinda ironic for a "redemption" website
The witch-hunt continues.
Why do you want to find the people who did this and publicly humiliate them so badly ? None of you knows the details yet you act like you know exactly what THQ should do. Maybe it was a legitimate mistake. You're filled with resentment for people you know nothing about.
All of this is kinda ironic for a "redemption" website
Summary of the topic up to now.
To provide background as to 8chan. 8chan as an anonymous message board modeled on 4chan, but meant to be less restrictive than 4chan. As 4chan already restricts very little, in practice what this means is that 8chan is a 4chan clone with a focus on child pornography / pedophilic content.
From Wikipedia:
Additionally, 8chan has a large Neo-Nazi presence, and was the host to Gamergate supporters after 4chan banned them. Blatant anti-semitic, misogynist, and racist posts are extremely common. Additionally, things like doxxing and swatting; the list just goes on.
Because of this, Google has removed 8chan from its search listings. Instead of finding the website, your search results will result in sites like Wikipedia that just tell you what the website is. This is important to note, as if someone interacts with the website, it raises the question of how they even found it in the first place.
THQ's official twitter announces that they're performing an AMA on 8chan's gaming board, /v/:
THQ also notes that they were approached by the gaming board's owner, a Mark (the identity has been guessed at being Mark Kern of Red 5 Studios, a noted Gamergate supporter, but I don't think it's been definitely proven). Cue The Room jokes.
Mark promises to handle the "nasty stuff", which presumably suggests that THQ is aware of the risk of posting on a child pornography supporting message board and wants to avoid legal risks or something along those lines. At any rate, them acknowledging "nasty stuff" tells us that they know it's a possibility here.
Getting a little ahead of ourselves, but they also like a tweet calling criticisms against the AMA on 8chan - again, a site largely defined by its attitute to child pornography - as "sensitive", suggesting a flippant attitude to the whole situation.
We can see a similar attitude expressed in the Linkedin of their PR and Marketing Director, Philipp Brock.
After speculation that maybe this was a hack or a fake, a journalist at PC Games Insider reaches out and confirms that this actually is THQ Nordic.
Some comments from Imran (news editor at Game Informer).
Looking at the activity within the AMA itself. But before you even get to the thread, you have to go to /v/, which was currently advertising a board devoted to pictures (perhaps illustrated) of children at the top of the page. Note that "shotacon" refers to attraction to young boys while "lolicon" refers to attraction to young girls, and "shota" and "loli" to the children themselves.
This would be seen both when posting the thread and going to reply to it.
Note that while 8chan is an anonymous message board and any user can put in any name, there are ways to identify users. I believe IDs are generated on a thread by thread basis and mapped to a certain IP address, but I confess I don't know the specifics of it. In this case, we can see that all of THQ's users are given an ID of 159bc1, which identifies their posts as coming from the same place regardless of what name they put in, perhaps a single company IP being subnetted to multiple users. Additionally, they are given a ## Reporter tag by the board's manager to confirm their official status.
One THQ Nordic name we see is Philipp, the aforementioned PR and marketing director, Philipp Brock.
We can see Philipp assuring an 8chan user that the company will not appeal to social justice. He does not have the ## Reporter tag here, but he does have the 159bc1 ID.
Another post where Philipp tells the user that they've already got "big tiddie lolis" - again, underage girls. Here we have both the 159bc1 ID and the ## Reporter tag.
Here Philipp makes a joke. No ## Reporter tag, but he does have the 159bc1 ID.
Another THQ Nordic name involved is Reinhard. Here we have Reinhard ignoring slurs posted in the AMA. Both the ## Reporter tag and the 159bc1 ID are present.
Reinhard also responds to a homophobic post saying that the image might be from one of their games. Again, the ## Reporter tag and the 159bc1 ID are both present.
Reinhard appears to be Reinhard Pollice, Business & Product Development Director at THQ Nordic. Bear in mind that we're now dealing with a major player within the company, not just someone low on the PR rung.
http://www.thqnordic-investors.com/en/board-and-management/
When reached to for a response, Reinhard puts the blame on Philipp.
Another member of THQ Nordic is Fabian. His identity is not confirmed. However, he does have the ## Reporter tag and the same 159bc1 ID.
In another post, he says that he has no idea why they picked 8chan as the venue. Again, he has both the ## Reporter tag and the 159bc1 ID.
Meanwhile, 8channers are whining about ResetEra, because what else would a forum with a big Gamergate continigent do. Other questions contain the sort of content (racism, nazi imagery, etc.) that is expected from this website.
Philipp ultimately provides an apology.
Note that the contents of the apology claim that the issue was due to lack of due diligence and understanding. Also remember that this is a website that is unlisted by Google, that they had spoken the board owner previously and specifically on the topic of "nasty stuff", that they had clearly seen questionable content during the AMA itself, and that they had liked a tweet that claimed that critics of the AMA were just sensitive. The claim made in the apology doesn't match the evidence.
In an interview, Philipp claims that he continued the AMA despite the offensive content because he was overwhelmed.
In another, he defends one of replies in the AMA.
Waypoint reached out to the CEO of THQ Nordic who declined to comment, instead referring to Philipp's apology.
Waypoint also reached out to THQ Nordic's actual developers, who are upset at being tied to this marketing attempt.
The story is picked up by various websites. This includes gaming websites (Gamesindustry.biz, Waypoint, Gamasutra) but also more general publications like (Newsweek, Variety)
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/artic...olding-ama-on-imageboard-known-for-child-porn
https://waypoint.vice.com/en_us/art...ebsite-banned-for-suspected-child-pornography
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/...osts_AMA_in_a_notorious_internet_cesspool.php
https://www.newsweek.com/thq-nordic-ama-8chan-games-twitter-mark-1345068
https://variety.com/2019/gaming/news/thq-nordic-holds-ama-on-8chan-1203150074/
The witch-hunt continues.
Why do you want to find the people who did this and publicly humiliate them so badly ? None of you knows the details yet you act like you know exactly what THQ should do. Maybe it was a legitimate mistake. You're filled with resentment for people you know nothing about.
All of this is kinda ironic for a "redemption" website
The witch-hunt continues.
Why do you want to find the people who did this and publicly humiliate them so badly ? None of you knows the details yet you act like you know exactly what THQ should do. Maybe it was a legitimate mistake. You're filled with resentment for people you know nothing about.
All of this is kinda ironic for a "redemption" website
See, the reason we demonize "witch hunts" is because the suspects involved weren't actually flying around on broomsticks and turning into frogs. If the witches posted a link on Twitter where we could see them doing it, then reassured critics and liked a tweet about how people are too sensitive to throwing trick-or-treaters into cauldrons, then the witch hunt doesn't seem so bad anymore.The witch-hunt continues.
Why do you want to find the people who did this and publicly humiliate them so badly ? None of you knows the details yet you act like you know exactly what THQ should do. Maybe it was a legitimate mistake. You're filled with resentment for people you know nothing about.
All of this is kinda ironic for a "redemption" website
I'll admit it could've been a better foot, but I've seen enough corporate apologies to also know that it could've been a lot worse.I think this is a good foot forward, so long as we actually hear about the investigation results after the fact.
The witch-hunt continues.
Why do you want to find the people who did this and publicly humiliate them so badly ? None of you knows the details yet you act like you know exactly what THQ should do. Maybe it was a legitimate mistake. You're filled with resentment for people you know nothing about.
All of this is kinda ironic for a "redemption" website
You're uninformed. Maybe you should address that before commenting on this matter any further.The witch-hunt continues.
Why do you want to find the people who did this and publicly humiliate them so badly ? None of you knows the details yet you act like you know exactly what THQ should do. Maybe it was a legitimate mistake. You're filled with resentment for people you know nothing about.
All of this is kinda ironic for a "redemption" website
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.
They are doing something. Says right there they have some kind of investigation going on.
The investigation may result in them doing something. In and of itself, it doesn't mean that anything has changed.
I think that's a bit disingenuous to say other publications are letting THQN's full-on embrace of 8chan fall to the way side if they make articles about other things in the meantime. Klepek's link to Anthem bricking PS4s shows he knows other important things are happening. He just wants to emphasis that publications shouldn't wash their hands of the story after this apologyOh 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.
Nothing's going to change until they've done their investigation. Otherwise there'd be no point in having one.
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 have a very good fucking reason to want those responsible fired.
The witch-hunt continues.
Why do you want to find the people who did this and publicly humiliate them so badly ? None of you knows the details yet you act like you know exactly what THQ should do. Maybe it was a legitimate mistake. You're filled with resentment for people you know nothing about.
All of this is kinda ironic for a "redemption" website
I don't disagree with that. Which is why I'm wondering why you started this conversation with:
instead of the expectation that they're going to be doing something and we should be waiting to see what that is instead of just closing the book now.
I started with that because that was my initial reaction to it. There ain't that much else to say about it. Some guy/guys did something monumentally dumb and no doubt they'll get fired for dragging their company's name through the mud.
So your initial reaction to an apology for incident where they left a link to a website connected to child pornography up for fifteen hours, issued one week after the incident, during which a number of journalists mentioned that they avoided calls (but one noted that they sent an unsolicited game code), and which itself follows another set of more immediate and direct responses wherein the CEO and the involved senior executive instead directed journalists to someone lower on the chain - is to take it on faith that everyone involved will be will be fired?
Pretty much yeah. There ain't no company on this planet that wants it's brand to be associated with kiddie porn. So I'd imagine whoever's responsible is going to get shit canned pretty damn soon.
Okay, so I'll follow up with one last question. Not going to respond to you any more after this.
Is there literally any behaviour THQ Nordic could have exhibited - anything they could have done or failed to do - that would have convinced you that they were more interested in burying this situation under the rug rather than taking the most direct solution and firing the people involved, and if so what would it take in order to convince you of that?
I'm really sorry if it seems like a generalization. The point I was trying to make is that to me it makes no sense to say "we're based Sweden so we can't be bigots". As with any country in the world there are exceptions like the two persons I've mentioned. It wasn't my intention to ridicule Sweden, rather than making a point that it was a strange example to mention in the apology. I thought that was clear by the tone of the rest of my post but I shouldn't have done that. :(And americans elected trump, so whats your point? It is stupid to generlize countries like that.
they won't. this is exactly the thing you say when you plan to do absolutely nothing and hope it will all just blow over. and it mostly will. it's doubtful they will ever grant any kind of interview to sites like waypoint. meanwhile they can count on the gamespots and igns to not give a shit. hell, they could just ignore the big sites altogether and lean into influencers a lot more. there are definitely a lot of alt-right friendly youtubers and streamers.I think this is a good foot forward, so long as we actually hear about the investigation results after the fact.
I don't know if you know this but most countries have employment laws which protect people from being instantly canned. That includes dumb fucks who decide to associate their company's brand with kid porn. So there ain't no "direct solution." I expect if THQ hsd kicked the guy out on his ass last week, the first thing he'd have done was run to some ambulance chaser and sued them to the fuckin moon. So, I expect THQ probably decided it was best not to break any laws, have some bullshit investigation so there ain't comeback and then shitcan the guy.
Sorry, I'm going to have to break my promise because I don't understand how this answers the question. So your answer is no, completely regardless of what THQ Nordic does or doesn't do, I am taking it on absolute faith that they will move to fire the people responsible. Correct?
I'm going to assume that by referring to "the guy" you are referring to Philipp Brock as well as the senior executive and shareholder Reinhard Pollice.