Palette Swap
Member
I have no doubt "good men" lose their jobs over unprofessional behavior every day. But let's blame the Internet.
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Adam Orth no longer with Microsoft
- Thread starter Wario64
- Start date
Well, it's his own damn fault. It's 2013, you should know that your online presence means a lot to your employer, especially if your employer is a fucking tech company who is heavily invested in the internet. Seriously, I just graduated from college and I know that.
Yeah, it sucks for him that he's out of job, but given the circumstances I think the only one who should be feeling sorry for him is himself.
Yeah, it sucks for him that he's out of job, but given the circumstances I think the only one who should be feeling sorry for him is himself.
Something to remember is that likely someone somewhere would've drawn attention to this. Maybe someone at Kotaku, Joystiq, wherever sees it and runs a story, speculating what it might mean. The only way to have surely avoided this was to either not say it or at least keep it private, at least if someone who he approved followed it and reported it to others the "it's a private twitter asshat" would've probably been a VERY useful shield to deflect a lot of the criticism, or at least keep his job safer.
Ninja Scooter
Member
He might be a good dude but he acted stupid on the internet. Acting stupid on the internet can cost you your job at Dairy Queen, let alone a high profile position at Microsoft. He should have known a lot better.
BlackGoku03
Member
Maybe. I tend to give people the benefit of doubt. I wonder how the situation went down though.. How it was decided. If he had friends in upper management then I'm sure things would be different.
Has there been another case like this where the employee didn't get fired?
akidnamededdy
Banned
Hahah which one of you is The Real Luigi.
LAUGHTREY
Modesty becomes a woman
...Nah. If you put it out there yourself and talk bad about your customers straight to their faces, you should be fired.
He can't even claim ignorance or plausible deniability because someone allegedly recorded him saying these things behind closed doors or something because he was dumb enough to tell people to dealwithit over twitter. He put on a bad image for his company, and he cost them money.
Barbacoatl
Banned
If he's such a good sport let him work at the local church kitchen or something. Hint: he'll be back in no time at another corporate america outlet. Here's a kleenex for the tears.
akidnamededdy
Banned
Says guy with Luigi hatted avatar
No way dude, if I learned anything from all this it's to stay the hell away from Twitter.
BurnOutBrighter
Banned
Interesting note from an Internet comment:
He got no chance to apologise, because he didn't want to apologise. Makes sense considering all we've heard about him.
He got no chance to apologise, because he didn't want to apologise. Makes sense considering all we've heard about him.
Yup, blaming the internet for something he could've controlled by conducting himself in a professional manner is rediculous. The only one at blame here is Adam Orth.
Chie Satonaka
Member
I just want to say that Kevin Dent's twitter is disgusting. It actually made me angry reading it.
If this is the attitude of the new games industry, I'm almost ready to quit now and start retrogaming for the rest of my life. Just awful, arrogant people who treat customers and potential customers like trash.
If this is the attitude of the new games industry, I'm almost ready to quit now and start retrogaming for the rest of my life. Just awful, arrogant people who treat customers and potential customers like trash.
mullet2000
Member
Just curious, why do you think the repercussions weren't proportional?
If I was an exec at Microsoft and one of my employees seemingly confirmed a controversial feature of one of my products before we announced it, antagonized my customers and overall caused a whole PR mess for the product...I know I wouldn't be very happy with him.
EleventhDoctor
Banned
We all know assholes in real life and we can't do anything but suffer through life with them. We've all dreamed of them getting their just deserts-and here is a very public example of that.
Any studio would die to hire Cliffy B. His experience and contributions to gaming are pretty legendary.
I'm pretty sure he's declining offers on a weekly basis, and possibly even blank cheques from MS and others.
The thing is, there is probably some truth to what Dent is saying. The industry hardly likes like magic and sunshine, quite the opposite actually.
I definitely agree with this. I'm not an executive head so I wouldn't know how to exactly handle the situation but I assume there was some sort of NDA with the product he was describing and that's on grounds to being terminated.
I think you can note the truth without being an asshole though. lol.
akidnamededdy
Banned
It probably is, yeah.
All the more reason none of these people should be posting on Twitter. At least not with their real names and job titles in their profiles.
EDIT: by "these people" I of course mean people like Orth, Dent, Gies, etc. who clearly cannot control themselves on social media.
Don't associate Dent with the industry at-large please.
VeryGooster
Banned
I don't even know who the Dent guy is, but every time I see a re-tweet from him it's either incredibly condescending or generally awful.
shinobi602
Member
That in no way justifies treating a potential customer, hell, just another human being like he is right now. Read his Twitter, down right insulting.
LAUGHTREY
Modesty becomes a woman
I like that the idea that the internet can have any sort of sway in this at all, to be frank.
What's his boss say to him?
"I'm sorry Adam, the internet has spoken. We have to let you go."
It's hilarious.
davidjaffe
The Fucking MAN.
Nah, you've heard nothing valid about the guy if you think he's not the apologizing type.
Adam is a good, good guy and a real talent. And he's a nice guy as well. He teases and fucks around- like so many of us on the net do- and yeah, he tweeted without thinking (like many of us on the net do) and he just got very unlucky.
But as for apologizing: I assure you the only reasons he's not apologizing for what some folks want him to apologize for is:
a- why would he apologize for his take on 'always on'? You may not agree with him, but the man has a right to a perfectly valid opinion. Not MY opinion on the issue, but the guy has a right to feel how he feels.
b- Why apologize for the whole whole 'why on Earth would I live there' bit when it was a smart ass trolly joke for his buddy? Adam does not actually feel that way at all and so the only thing he might apologize for is not being clear he was being intentionally smarmy and sarcastic but nowhere near serious.
David
Barbacoatl
Banned
What are kevin dent's games? Just to make sure to not touch them with a rod from god.
He wasn't fired though.
Are you talking about people on the internet taking it too far? Was there some kind of harassment that went farther than the typical blow-ups that happen with any internet scandal that led to him resigning?
I agree. Most of the executives that I've talked to and conversed with are extremely nice and generous.
publicpwnerer
Member
Amen to that.
Lets not forget that Orth's comments didn't just originate and stay on forums...it made almost every gaming news site / blog, particularly at the height of the "always on" drama.
His actions were a concentrated dose of stupidity.
Yet the internet just keeps on celebrating their downships according to a few here.
Rawket Lawnchair
Member
Twitter will be everyone's undoing. It seems to bring out the worst in people.
Lord Panda
The Sea is Always Right
What the hell is your beef with Shinobi? Adam should have shown better judgement and professionalism. This isn't the first time he's drawn attention to himself like this. Adam fucked up and he paid for it ,,. with his resignation.
And Kevin Dent ... is a tool. With people like that defending you, who needs enemies.
Yeah. Even the writers that sometimes get bashed here don't act as bad as him. Some of the stuff he is saying and has been doing since I have observed some of his tweets. I don't even know what he does in the industry.
It doesn't. It just allows people to say things they shouldn't in public, to millions of people while thinking they're just talking to a couple of friends.
water_wendi
Water is not wet!
Honestly if you want to blame someone other than Adam Orth it was the gaming journalists that got him fired. If it was contained to a forum things might have died down and crisis would have been averted. Instead every gaming website made it front page news on a slow news weekend.
endlessflood
Member
I think if he'd been smart and reacted quickly he could have defused the situation, at least to the extent that his job wasn't in jeopardy. After the initial raft of stupid posts, he just needed to come out and say something like this (across a few consecutive tweets):
"People seem confused. Just so it's very clear, my tweets aren't related to next gen consoles IN ANY WAY, it's just a long-running philosophical argument between myself and my friend Manveer. The comments about those cities are a dig at Manveer too, no offence to the lovely inhabitants of those great places."
Sure, if it turns out that the Nextbox is always-online then it would've outed him, but by then people would've had bigger fish to fry than him. I don't think most of the stories would have come out either, and even if they did he would have had a solid basis for saying that he didn't do anything wrong because he never said anything about next gen consoles and in fact explicitly stated that his tweets had nothing to do with them.
"People seem confused. Just so it's very clear, my tweets aren't related to next gen consoles IN ANY WAY, it's just a long-running philosophical argument between myself and my friend Manveer. The comments about those cities are a dig at Manveer too, no offence to the lovely inhabitants of those great places."
Sure, if it turns out that the Nextbox is always-online then it would've outed him, but by then people would've had bigger fish to fry than him. I don't think most of the stories would have come out either, and even if they did he would have had a solid basis for saying that he didn't do anything wrong because he never said anything about next gen consoles and in fact explicitly stated that his tweets had nothing to do with them.
shinobi602
Member
But it wasn't just for his "opinions" or the jokes between him and Manveer. It was a bunch of other ridiculous condescending tweets, I mean for crying out loud, a regular Joe Shmoe asked him something along the lines of "I personally know 5 people with Xbox 360s who don't have Internet...they would be screwed". Responding by saying "They should get with the times and get the Internet, it's awesome" doesn't really fly well by anyone's standards.
I can imagine that guy feeling pretty insulted with that answer.
Chie Satonaka
Member
I know, and I understand that. It's just that it's super frustrating as a consumer to hear stuff like this from an industry that I support with a lot of money. Between this whole debacle and recent other instances such as being called "entitled" and "whiny", things seem to be going in a direction that I just don't like.
I'm not ready to jump off the cliff just yet, though.
Before reading Kevin Dent's twitter I had no idea Adam Orth was comparable to Picasso. Would you fire Picasso? Would you?
I thought the 2013's stupidest tweet was nailed early with Matt Chandronait's "integrity breeds consternation." to Arthur Gies. But Kevin Dent is a real find, and I have high hopes for him.
I thought the 2013's stupidest tweet was nailed early with Matt Chandronait's "integrity breeds consternation." to Arthur Gies. But Kevin Dent is a real find, and I have high hopes for him.
That actually DOES sound like something you'd say "sorry, was just messing around with my pal." But I think he DID say something like that which got drowned out by the outcry of always online seemingly being confirmed this way.
Nocturno999
Member
Amazing that people blame forum posters for Orth's suicide. He confirmed the existence of always online not to mention that he also made fun of potential customers that have unreliable Internet.
"Why would I live there" was funny but "Deal with it" was pure douche-baggery.
"Why would I live there" was funny but "Deal with it" was pure douche-baggery.
akidnamededdy
Banned
He's the COO of P4RCINC, apparently has been since January. Seems like just yet another dime-a-dozen mobile game developer.
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/kevin-dent/4/92/441
His past work sounds like a bunch of mobile game companies, too. Tiswaz and Exit Games definitely are, at least.
Something tells me you're not exactly in danger of playing something he's been involved with anyway, hahah.
CaptainGyro
Banned
nm
Lord Panda
The Sea is Always Right
Nice guy or no, he displayed the social awareness of a sodden cucumber.
ArkkAngel007
Member
Most people should have known that from the get-go though.
Granted, the real issue was when he started acting that way with 'dem regular folk. Acting out with friends is one thing (though still stupid in this context), but doing so with strangers/customers is playing with fire.
To be clear: He was way out of line for publicly acting out in such a fashion when tied to the very same company of the subject matter.
Barbacoatl
Banned
Oh, just another member of the lovely twitter trait "everyone's a fucking ceo". Never heard of him or his company until this thread. Like you say, nothing of value will be lost by never speaking of him again.
Chie Satonaka
Member
Can we speak of him to make fun of him?
We probably shouldn't. We might be responsible for him being fired, too.
akidnamededdy
Banned
Can we speak of him to make fun of him?
We probably shouldn't. We might be responsible for him being fired, too.
Our power....beyond....our control....HRRRRNNNNGHHH.....!