Kotaku: The ArenaNet Catastrophe Has The Whole Game Industry Rethinking Harassment Policies

Damaging narrative? I try to inform myself on a situation and the easiest thing is to ask other more informed users. Is it so hard to answer with sources?

It is only damaging the narrative if you can't provide easy, provable sources to your statements. As you proved to be an unreasonable and rude discussion participant, I don't take just your word as the truth. And I don't make it my goal in life to search for things that may or may not exist if the user that claimed such a thing could show me where to find those statements in seconds.

Let me give you a timeline of my view on this whole disaster:
- first reporting: "What the fuck is ArenaNet doing! Caving to Mysoginists?"
- looking at the tweets in question: "Okay, she was rude to a customer, maybe ArenaNet overshot with the firings, but they could just have a really narrow social media policy."
- after she was fired, there came reports, that GG was responsible: "Those fuckers probably tried it but are probably just claiming "the success" to stroke their egos and let them feel alpha or such shit. Peter Fries was also fired, so the initial statement of the firings being done because of violation against social media conduct is probably the biggest contributor but I can't rule out that they felt pressure from their community."
- You are claiming that those social media rules are quite lax. That would completely change my view on the whole disaster and gets me back to my initial "what the fuck is Arenanet doing?" view.

Not everyone who asks for clarification and sources is the enemy. I make up my own mind, I don't follow blindly just anyone's narrative even if I have the same viewpoint/political leaning/etc. or want it to be true. Yours was the first post that I skimmed over, that mentioned a lax social media policy and that ArenaNet was aware of tweets "that she got away with" (your quote) and did nothing, so the easiest thing was to ask for sources.

The problem here is that of timing and approach. ArenaNet were completely justified in firing price, and I can believe that their decision was based solely on the fact that she as an employee had been aggressively rude to an important member of the community on a public forum. Anyone who can't see how her actions would lead to being fired, well, I don't know what to tell you. It would certainly happen at other companies.

It's a slippery slope, but gaming is an interesting industry. Gamers idolise developers to such an extent that they become celebrities that embody the studio they work for in their eyes. Think about it, you've seen execs from Sony or Microsoft say dumb shit and people spouting "arrogant Sony is back", even though they're the words of one man or woman and in no way a reflection of the thousands of people who also work at those companies.

Taking that into account, when you as a developer specify on your personal social media channels that you work at a company, whether your like it or not you're a representative of that company. You effectively become a public figure. If you say things on an open forum then fans WILL find it and pick up on it so you must have some tact. This is exactly why social media and community managers exist, because there is a certain way customers and fans must be spoken to and the majority don't know boundaries. Some even encourage developers not to interact with fans too much unless they've had sufficient training in how to communicate with customers over social media.

To that end I think it's okay for companies to take action if you say inappropriate things, especially to their customers on social media. Private or otherwise. It is what it is.

Yerba_Sutra said:

welp

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They are being misleading about the tb tweet. She mentioned that he couldn't hurt people anymore, which is a far cry from something like the bioware employee saying the world was better off with him dead.

Kyougar said:

I didn't follow this much after the first 3 threads, can you show me where we have access to the content of ArenaNet's social media policy? Or someone who had seen it, talking about it?

Also, claiming that she got away with her behavior prior to the firing doesn't really hold as an argument. For all we know, she could have accumulated several infractions with or without an internal official reprimand before her firings. Or do we have statements on the records that she was never disciplined because of her public statements?
The only thing I saw was her statement on her hiring, that she is not afraid to talk her mind (paraphrased)

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This is how you came in despite you skimming over my post with me mentioning all these specific things and your first thought was making this statement instead of using google or straight out ask "hey can you share the link to where these things were said?"

Your first instinct in a world post gamergate, where we know this shit is happening a lot, is to come up with a reason of why the firing was justified? After skimming my post mentioning all these reasons....
Don't give me that shit about how you make up your own opinion. Lmao. That's a very questionable bias right there you should think about it.

You can continue pretend like that isn't an insanely shitty thing to do or how you deserve the benefit of the doubt despite people actually doing this exact thing intentionally to derail discussions. Or you can literally go to the first post in the other thread have all the resources listed on very first post of the thread read through be informed then come back and argue instead of continuing you defending your ignorance and how I shouldn't be so mean.

All the Price firing does is justify harassment while the women being harassed will feel like they have to take it or risk their jobs. No matter how justified you feel like the firing was, if ArenaNet left the situation alone, this whole thing would've blown over. Now, not only are the actions toxic individuals validated, but this is going to hurt ArenaNet long term.

Nairume said:

They are being misleading about the tb tweet. She mentioned that he couldn't hurt people anymore, which is a far cry from something like the bioware employee saying the world was better off with him dead.

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So I looked this up since I'm at home and not tethered to mobile, and here's the tweet in question:


cosmicblizzard are these the Infinity War comments you were talking about? Where does she "blow up" on someone?

Yerba_Sutra said:

So I looked this up since I'm at home and not tethered to mobile, and here's the tweet in question:

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Right. While it might be rude, it's not her celebrating his death, just his inability to cause harm.

And even if it's rude, controversial figures like tb shouldn't be spared from references of wrongdoi g just because they've passed.

Khamsinvera said:

Should companies be allowed to regulate or have a say in what their employees can or can't do on their private social media accounts?

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Most places I've worked in the UK already have it in the contract that if you have a social media profile heavily linked, or your public identity is heavily linked to the business, anything said on social media (which the business considers an open forum similar to public speaking) that brings the company into disrepute could lead to disciplinary action and summary dismissal.

MrLuchador said:

Most places I've worked in the UK already have it in the contract that if you have a social media profile heavily linked, or your public identity is heavily linked to the business, anything said on social media (which the business considers an open forum similar to public speaking) that brings the company into disrepute could lead to disciplinary action and summary dismissal.

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As it should be, i don't know how anyone could think otherwise.

The "whole" gaming industry? I doubt it kotkau.

darrec said:

As it should be, i don't know how anyone could think otherwise.

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Yeah I dont see why people find this aspect shocking.

If someone acted like a psychotic neonazi on twitter and didn't get fired people would be going nuts about WHY DOES YOUR COMPANY EMPLOY THIS PERSON and so on. Companies dont want to deal with shit, they want to be known for their products and anything that leaves a positive view for as many people as possible

Those two people who got fired from Arenanet should be suing for wrongful dismisal.

not much else to say other than "companies should deal with this stuff on a case-per-case basis and with common sense"

no amount of guidelines are gonna work for every case..give too much freedom and you hurt your company, give too much restrictions and your rules can be abused to target people.

Yerba_Sutra said:

So I looked this up since I'm at home and not tethered to mobile, and here's the tweet in question:

cosmicblizzard are these the Infinity War comments you were talking about? Where does she "blow up" on someone?

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That's not the Infinty War tweet I saw. At work now so I can't look for it right now, but I'll try to find it later.

And yeah, that's the TB tweet, which doesn't seem that bad if you ignore the context and implications. It's still implicitly celebrating his death the day it happened where Genna can see it and would have been bannable here had she posted it the day of.

I work for a pretty big company and we all signed a contract about how to act on social media. It's not surprising in the least, at least for Canada,

Nairume said:

Right. While it might be rude, it's not her celebrating his death, just his inability to cause harm.

And even if it's rude, controversial figures like tb shouldn't be spared from references of wrongdoi g just because they've passed.

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While I agree people who are controversial shouldn't be celebrated, sometimes things are better left unsaid or even said privately.

I'm going to assume she is a rational adult here and what that comment does serves nothing more to fan the flames.

Unless there's another purpose to tweeting that publicly, she knew exactly what she was doing by posting that.

Yerba_Sutra said:

cosmicblizzard are these the Infinity War comments you were talking about? Where does she "blow up" on someone?

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cosmicblizzard said:

That's not the Infinty War tweet I saw. At work now so I can't look for it right now, but I'll try to find it later.

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You mean the answer to the answer of this one, right?


Edit: Should probably clarify that you can click on it for the thread where Jebro answers. I thought I would link this first one because later ones might be a bit spoiler-y?

Yerba_Sutra said:

So I looked this up since I'm at home and not tethered to mobile, and here's the tweet in question:

cosmicblizzard are these the Infinity War comments you were talking about? Where does she "blow up" on someone?

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It was this one below. You can continue reading the conversation and see she gets aggressive for no reason. Its pretty ironic that she went off on the guy for critiquing her work but she says things like this about others

Jessica Price (@Delafina777) Tweeted:
Wow. Infinity War is a rancid piece of trash and the worst part of it is you can tell the fuckers who made it think it was brave and profound. https://twitter.com/Delafina777/status/991188809290153984?s=17

QisTopTier said:

Yeah I dont see why people find this aspect shocking.

If someone acted like a psychotic neonazi on twitter and didn't get fired people would be going nuts about WHY DOES YOUR COMPANY EMPLOY THIS PERSON and so on. Companies dont want to deal with shit, they want to be known for their products and anything that leaves a positive view for as many people as possible

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Yes, because she was a nazi...

I feel like a lot of this should have been implemented years ago? Having policy in regards to social media has been a thing for at least the last 5 years or so.

The story about somebody almost getting fired because of fake letters is ridiculous. If somebody is just out of the blue getting hundreds of letters asking for them to be fired and they've done nothing wrong, then you're bad at your job as an employer if your response to that is to let somebody go without even looking into things further which thankfully somebody did.

In Price's case she's been tweeting fuckery for quite some time and its by the grace of the industries relaxed policies that she was reprimanded sooner.

cosmicblizzard said:

And yeah, that's the TB tweet, which doesn't seem that bad if you ignore the context and implications. It's still implicitly celebrating his death the day it happened where Genna can see it and would have been bannable here had she posted it the day of.

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If you're going to talk about context and implications then you need to specifically state what they are and be clear if the rest of your post is describing it because I really don't like playing assumption games

dan2026 said:

Those two people who got fired from Arenanet should be suing for wrongful dismisal.

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With the tweets readily visible as public record that wouldn't look good for Price. Fries, maybe.

Brock Reiher said:

Good grief, that's the worst possible takeaway. Of course companies should be able to, but they should have the good sense to do it for the right reasons. If they fuck it up, there's backlash.

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Simple and true

AtticusFincher said:

In Price's case she's been tweeting fuckery for quite some time and its by the grace of the industries relaxed policies that she was reprimanded sooner.

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ANet were fine with her being her outspoken self on Twitter and told her that when they hired her.
There is a difference between that and openly attacking a verified member of the community in direct relation to her work (because she was talking about her work) and ArenaNet had apparently not been clear about that distinction.

excelsiorlef said:

Gaming is such a fucked up place.

Because note here the CEO was ready to fire her if the bots had been real people upset that they were employing a trans woman.

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I need to see receipts before I believe anyone was ready to fire her. How does anyone know this?

Interested Observer said:

I need to see receipts before I believe anyone was ready to fire her. How does anyone know this?

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So basically you'll need her to out herself to the internet which targeted her in the first place before you believe it... yeah cool cool.

Spyware said:

ANet were fine with her being her outspoken self on Twitter and told her that when they hired her.
There is a difference between that and openly attacking a verified member of the community in direct relation to her work (because she was talking about her work) and ArenaNet had apparently not been clear about that distinction.

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I have had trouble keeping up with the few threads around this topic; has a link confirming this been posted? If so it renders the discussion I've been having pointless.

I'm glad companies are taking measures to ensure their developers and artists they have their backs in case a mob comes for them and preparing/reviewing their policies on how to act when or if such a thing should occur. I think that's an important discussion to have in an era where those events are, unfortunately, prevalent. I think this is a positive step for the industry.

I don't think mob harassment should be ignored, in fact, I think it's been ignored for far too long but I also don't believe that was the main reason why she was fired. I hope the industry understands this and I hope those who would rejoice over her firing don't feel empowered by the way some of the media has been reporting these news.

I don't see this event as a victory for harassers, I see it as an unfortunate string of events that could have easily been resolved with dialogue.

Yerba_Sutra said:

I have had trouble keeping up with the few threads around this topic; has a link confirming this been posted? If so it renders the discussion I've been having pointless.

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I think every article that includes statements from Price has this thing in them?

"I warned people in my interview that I was loud about these issues on social media and had no intention of shutting up," she told Kotaku of when she first got hired at ArenaNet. "They reassured me that they 'admired [my] willingness to speak truth to power.'"

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(this specific one from Kotaku)
I assume "these issues" refer to being a female game dev and the hate against women in these fields?

The CEO of ArenaNet says the devs had to go because of their "attacks on the community" (you can find this being quoted everywhere, will that do?), so that's what I personally used as "confirmation" that they see a difference between being outspoken in general versus dragging their customers into the spotlight while talking about these gender issues like Price did with Deroir by retweeting his tweet (a tweet which this CEO does not consider being any form of attack on Price).

There has also been this from The Verge

Although opinions about the firings fall across the board, many people at the studio are angry. "Everyone agrees something is wrong," one employee tells The Verge. "Some blame the media, some blame Jessica, some blame unclear social media policies, some blame the internet mob, and some blame [Mike O'Brien]." Others worry about the sustainability of their careers at ArenaNet and hope that their employer will speak up about harassment while there's still time to recover.

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where there is mention of "unclear social media policies".

Yeah, this has come up internally and in informal conversations with developer colleagues. The consensus I've heard, which I agree with, is that ArenaNet handled this extremely poorly and the industry has to reckon with the consequences of a newly empowered alt-right/GG. Even if there were extenuating circumstances around these personnel decisions, the optics of it is horrible and ArenaNet doubled down even after the toxic context became clear.

Thanks Spyware! I need to work on reading slower, it seems

SeanBoocock said:

Yeah, this has come up internally and in informal conversations with developer colleagues. The consensus I've heard, which I agree with, is that ArenaNet handled this extremely poorly and the industry has to reckon with the consequences of a newly empowered alt-right/GG. Even if there were extenuating circumstances around these personnel decisions, the optics of it is horrible and ArenaNet doubled down even after the toxic context became clear.

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Pretty much. I'm actually kind of surprised how terribly they handled all this. I'd be livid if I worked on that community team.

Relaxed Muscle said:

Yes, because she was a nazi...

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In your constant desire to always pick a fight with people you over looked the fact I'm not talking about anyone in particular in my post and was just using an extreme example of how acting on social media gets you in trouble.

The one bright spot in all of this is that game developers realize they what ArenaNet did was cowardice bullshit and are not bending the knee like they did.

QisTopTier said:

In your constant desire to always pick a fight with people you over looked the fact I'm not talking about anyone in particular in my post and was just using an extreme example of how acting on social media gets you in trouble.

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Sure, if you pick the most extreme case, we aren't talking about extreme cases. There's like a million things between what happened this week and someone who belongs to an ideology that advocated for the extermination of one race.

Relaxed Muscle said:

Sure, if you pick the most extreme case, we aren't talking about extreme cases. There's like a million things between what happened this week and someone who belongs to an ideology that advocated for the extermination of one race.

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Businesses don't care about only extreme cases either, anything that can remotely bring shit down on them they will act upon.

In the Anet case it was the writer unwarranted lashing out at a friendly community member and then ranting about said person in false pretenses after lashing out.

Shit heels jumped in after yes, but even if she didn't get fired in this case it would have been a major strike on her record.

In the other case this week, there was no fucking excuse for the CEO almost firing that worker

BDS said:

Dozens of young men politely explained to me that Price's firing was a totally isolated incident related to her Twitter behavior and had no connection to hate movements or mobs of sexists. I'm so confused. Are we supposed to like, listen to women's experiences or something?

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What? Listening to women? Don't be silly! The far better thing to do is keep on pretending that these things don't happen because gamers have the maturity of a child who believes in cooties.

I've come around on this a little bit in the past few days. If ANet had a stated social media policy in place and she broke it, or if she was already on some sort of improvement program for other offenses, the firing would be justified.

If there was no policy in place, some sort of internal discipline and development/clarity of a social media policy would have been the right choice. Her tweet was certainly rude, but firing over a first offense like this, especially if they knew she was abrasive on social media when they hired her, is not a good look.

(And having seen more of her Twitter history now, aired out for everyone to see, she seems pretty insufferable to me, but that's just my personal take and has literally zero bearing on her ability to do her job.)

Companies that fire employees for a single mistake are not the type of companies you want to work for, and not the type I would want to support (of course, I never played Guild Wars, so they aren't really losing anything from me). Where ANet really fucked up was by not denouncing the mob and making it clear that they have no power. Their follow up statement was so wishy-washy that they emboldened the mob, leading us to the worst possible outcome.

Spyware said:

You mean the answer to the answer of this one, right?


Edit: Should probably clarify that you can click on it for the thread where Jebro answers. I thought I would link this first one because later ones might be a bit spoiler-y?

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Hmmm, could have swore it was directed at someone and not just a harsh criticism of a product.

Yerba_Sutra said:

If you're going to talk about context and implications then you need to specifically state what they are and be clear if the rest of your post is describing it because I really don't like playing assumption games

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Note the "the nicest thing I can say" part. It's a dog whistle to other TB haters basically stating "I'd be a lot harsher if I could, but proper etiquette dictates I keep things relatively civil." It's basically a "I'm not X, but..." or "He/she was no angel" statement because it's adding a caveat to something that most can agree it either isn't the appropriate time for it or it just shouldn't be there at all because adding caveats to young people dying of cancer is repugnant. She's not being slick by going down that route and assuming others will buy it as a neutral stance.

cosmicblizzard said:

Hmmm, could have swore it was directed at someone and not just a harsh criticism of a product.

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Yeah the first tweet is against the movie, but then a guy comes in and states his opinion and she gets snippy at him. Basically. It's visible if you click the tweet. :)

cosmicblizzard said:

Note the "the nicest thing I can say" part. It's a dog whistle to other TB haters basically stating "I'd be a lot harsher if I could, but proper etiquette dictates I keep things relatively civil." It's basically a "I'm not X, but..." or "He/she was no angel" statement because it's adding a caveat to something that most can agree it either isn't the appropriate time for it or it just shouldn't be there at all because adding caveats to young people dying of cancer is repugnant. She's not being slick by going down that route and assuming others will buy it as a neutral stance.

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lmao I can't believe you just equated all of those things

Yerba_Sutra said:

lmao I can't believe you just equated all of those things

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It's obviously not the same in terms of severity, but it is at a base level of adding a caveat to "RIP". Doing that with beloved figures is going to cause issues regardless of one's opinion on said figure.

cosmicblizzard said:

It's obviously not the same in terms of severity, but it is at a base level of adding a caveat to "RIP". Doing that with beloved figures is going to cause issues regardless of one's opinion on said figure.

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We all know what TB did, and the damage it did to many people with the actions and the group he supported GG

dan2026 said:

Those two people who got fired from Arenanet should be suing for wrongful dismisal.

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Jessica won't because she will then have to face reality the majority of people wouldn't support her behavior.


Fries could have a chance but it would be expensive to challenge why he also got fired.

This is a case when a union would be useful. Though a union would also ensure someone like Jessica would be harder to remove as well but it wouldn't be impossible considering her history which is aok. The priority of a union is to create fair conditions for removal. Snap decisions shouldn't be easy to do.


What is more important is that the industry understands they need to take outcries from people outside their company more carefully. Firing someone like Jessica or Adam Orth should still be an option but they don't need to listen to harassment campaigns like the other ones mentioned in the Kotaku article.

SeanBoocock said:

Yeah, this has come up internally and in informal conversations with developer colleagues. The consensus I've heard, which I agree with, is that ArenaNet handled this extremely poorly and the industry has to reckon with the consequences of a newly empowered alt-right/GG. Even if there were extenuating circumstances around these personnel decisions, the optics of it is horrible and ArenaNet doubled down even after the toxic context became clear.

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Agreed.

People jumping on the "She was rude and deserved to be fired!" train sure like to ignore that there's options between ignoring social media behavior and outright firing. They could have told her to apologize. She could have been disciplined some other way.

But firing her right off the bat? Reeks of higher ups who wanted to handle the situation quickly without spending too much time deliberating on their options. They ignored the context of the industry that they're in that has had problems with major harassment campaigns even before GG. And now it's a headache for other people in the industry, and even more than a headache for women being targeted.

Even after GG metastasized into the alt-right and the BS that went on during the 2016 election, people still want to play it down and pretend like it's no big deal. ArenaNet had more options than firing Price. And the fact that they also fired Fries throws a ton of doubt on people's justifications they're hopping into this thread with.

ArenaNet's just repeating mistakes that the industry has already made time and time again. They ignore that women are being singled out as a group and harassed, and in doing so further empower the harassers. And then the problem spreads. Rinse and repeat.

Seems like almost the same situation as with Adam Orth who got booted for his infamous "why would I want to live there" response on Twitter in 2013 (Xbone launch) with the slighty difference that MS tried to hide the truth from their costumers with the firing. Here ArenaNet just used common sense. If you attack your customers and partners for no good reason then yeah better get ready to find a new job. And yes it's totally legitim to fire her over a tweet or other social media posts because in this particular situation she and the other guy represented ArenaNet and had at first a discussion about GW2 before Price tried to make it a gender issue.

cosmicblizzard said:

Note the "the nicest thing I can say" part. It's a dog whistle to other TB haters basically stating "I'd be a lot harsher if I could, but proper etiquette dictates I keep things relatively civil." It's basically a "I'm not X, but..." or "He/she was no angel" statement because it's adding a caveat to something that most can agree it either isn't the appropriate time for it or it just shouldn't be there at all because adding caveats to young people dying of cancer is repugnant. She's not being slick by going down that route and assuming others will buy it as a neutral stance.

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What the fuck is this? Some disgusting and false parallels are being drawn here.

barit said:

Seems like almost the same situation as with Adam Orth who got booted for his infamous "why would I want to live there" response on Twitter in 2013 (Xbone launch) with the slighty difference that MS tried to hide the truth from their costumers with the firing. Here ArenaNet just used common sense. If you attack your customers and partners for no good reason then yeah better get ready to find a new job. And yes it's totally legitim to fire her over a tweet or other social media posts because in this particular situation she and the other guy represented ArenaNet and had at first a discussion about GW2 before Price tried to make it a gender issue.

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So even after an entire thread of people painstakingly pointing out the larger context around this firing and why it's a problem, you just have to toss in your hot take?

Plenty of people have already pointed out that there were plenty of options besides firing Price. She apparently told the company about her social media habits when she signed on with ArenaNet. They hadn't told her it was an issue until this recent incident where they went straight to firing. You don't see anything wrong with that all? Not to mention that the firing of Fries for defending her throws even more doubt on ArenaNet not bowing to mob pressure.

As to the bolded: If you're still willing to close your eyes and stick your fingers in your ears after GG and the extremist right wing movements it has fed into, then I don't know how anyone can make things more apparent to you. Women have been and are being targeted in the video game industry. ArenaNet's firing of Price has certain implications in the context in which it happened. And yet you choose to ignore the latest way of harassment it's inspired so you can accuse Price of trying to make it a gender issue? She didn't make it a gender issue. The fuckwads trying to get other women fired in the industry made it a goddamn gender issue.

Is it fun to play contrarian and ignore victims? Do you somehow lose if you just entertain the possibility that women are treated worse than men in the video game industry? Get some goddamn perspective, man.

Nairume said:

They are being misleading about the tb tweet. She mentioned that he couldn't hurt people anymore, which is a far cry from something like the bioware employee saying the world was better off with him dead.

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I'll point out that said BioWare dev was also not fired, as he no longer worked at BioWare when he made that tweet and is actually working at EA Motive and there's no mention of being fired from there. Even if they did fire him from there, which again there's nothing saying he was, they still gave him more consideration then Price got, as they didn't make a big production of firing him - all that happened to him was BioWare stating he doesn't work there (which he doesn't) and that it doesn't represent their views. EA faced a bigger backlash and still protected their employee more than Areanet did, who fired two employees on a much milder incident.

This is pretty standard. The contract I signed says we are not allowed to display any political views on our social media. Don't like Trump but don't share it. That along with a few other 'be on you best behavior' clauses.

Safer to just well not share everything about yourself to the internet.