I've find it profoundly disturbing just how many people feel it's perfectly fine, and indeed laudable, for companies to immediately terminate employees during a situation like this. Even if you think that Price's actions were wrong, the fact that she had no warning and no recourse seems wrong. Yes, I know ArenaNet is based in an at-will employment state (Washington) so they are legally permitted to do this, but just because it's legal doesn't mean it's right.
But hey - all hail our corporate gaming overlords, right?
I agree. Her reaction was ridiculous and aggressive and was done in public and in reference to her work. Her employer absolutely should have disciplined her. However, the increasingly aggressive presence of internet mobs saying "fire this person or we'll make a terrible fuss!" over minor matters is absurd, getting worse, and is being abused by people of all political identities. It's just not an acceptable way for our society to function and the idea that it gets lauded by whichever side gets it to "work" is disgusting. Unfortunately the internet appears just to allow amplifying the grievances of the loudest subset of any group.
I hope companies learn that picking sides by firing someone does not resolve the matter and just pisses off more people. Hopefully that tones down their response and then makes the internet mobs less aggressive because they don't get as much satisfaction out of it.
The folks leading the charge on how terrible and unacceptable this is were, from what I've seen, mostly the same folks campaigning to get folks who aren't part of their clique fired over non-work-related political views and social media posts. It feels like just another aspect of the same thing: fire the people we want fired and employ the people we want you to employ, or we'll make a terrible fuss and drag your reputation through the mud.
> However, the increasingly aggressive presence of internet mobs saying "fire this person or we'll make a terrible fuss!" over minor matters is absurd, getting worse, and is being abused by people of all political identities.
This is how free markets work, though. The beliefs of the customers drive their purchase decisions. It's completely rational for a customer to say "I don't want to support a company that employs someone who behaves like this". Threatening to take their money elsewhere is their sole recourse, and one that is effective only in large groups.
> I hope companies learn that picking sides by firing someone does not resolve the matter and just pisses off more people.
It's really simple from an economic perspective: does firing this person result in more lost customers than being silent? I strongly suspect the answer to this is "no", and firing the employee is the better path. After all, the whole purpose of hiring an employee is to generate more value than they cost. In this case, the employee's actions were a large net negative.
> Hopefully that tones down their response and then makes the internet mobs less aggressive because they don't get as much satisfaction out of it.
I really don't see this ever happening. Even if the vast majority of companies decided to adopt a policy of turning a deaf ear to customer feedback, the only result would be new companies stepping up to fill the void.
* Her employer absolutely should have disciplined her. *
If her reaction to polite and constructive criticism from a user, and a customer, was this over the top, the reaction to a harsher comment (a disciplinary one), from her employer, wouldn't have been any better. Better to terminate the relationship before it gets nasty.
A bit of outside perspective: Insulting a customer is one of the rare occasions, besides crimes against the employer, that justify a termination in Germany. Where it is essentially impossible to fire a specific somebody.
My thoughts on this, too: If I were to pull a stunt like this in my industry, I'm pretty sure I'd be gone the next day.
As for disciplinary actions: From an outside perspective, I think we can't really tell if there wasn't any internal dialog prior to the firings. If you look at her follow-up statements, I kind of doubt Price would have shown any remorse when asked about the incident internally...
Edit: So, to say this more explicitly (since we're on the internet here): I don't think the outside public will ever have all the necessary facts to be able to judge if the firings were justified or not; especially since that decision alone is highly subjective.
I'm a bit torn on this, perhaps leaning a bit on the side of the firing being at least morally legitimate.
0) Her behavior was way out of line. No question about this.
1) There's no company out there that should be expected to look the other way when your employees are giving them a black eye on official channels. (And we can quibble about this, but when you're running officially blessed Q&A sessions and state your employer's name up front, it's "official enough" for most purposes)
2) Doing nothing or "handling it internally" would not have resolved the black eye. If anything, radio silence would have made ArenaNet look like they tacitly support rudely shouting down perfectly reasonable questions.
3) Making a public statement about how they don't support the words said (usual corpspeak PR nonsense that everyone can smell a mile away) would be recieved as cynical and noncommittal, possibly even making the brand perception issue worse.
4) Putting your employer into a lose-lose situation by your actions is generally a firing offense.
F2P games live and die on engagement in a way that paid titles do not, which magnifies the issue somewhat. Come to think of it, to memory, most firings that made the games media circuit that I can think of were F2P companies. Riot did it to someone making distasteful comments about a particularly infamous player.
If I recall correctly she also took great public glee in the slow, painful death of a prominent games reviewer/YouTuber from cancer, so I would be entirely unsurprised if she'd already been warned for something or the other and this was just the final straw.
The number of people I've seen lose their jobs over minor disagreements or having the wrong opinions for opinions I support means I no longer care about the people who lose their jobs over minor disagreements or having the wrong opinions for opinions I don't support. Briefly going over the Twitter feed/responses you can see the politics at play - even by parties not directly involved in the initial conversation. If you speak in a public forum - expect responses. If responses annoy you then speak in private and not public. I've seen people fired for engaging politely in a public place like how Deroir did. At this point to see the tables turned and the person attempting to shut down public discussion is instead fired gives me a sense of schadenfreude.
I hope that this culture will die out - but I only see it getting worse year over year. Maybe eventually when people realize that any form of public appearance is a risk to their livelihood people will begin to see the stupidity in instantly going for peoples' jobs when they upset you online.
ArenaNet were in a tight bind here. Price was using her personal Twitter account to make a stand on some issue, on behalf of her employer. They could have given her a warning, and announced that her statement didn't actually represent them; but then I could see all people seizing on that as evidence that ArenaNet secretly agreed with her, and were using her as an off-the-record mouthpiece. It could have been just as damaging to their reputation as immediately firing her was, good labour relations aside - and as you pointed out, both entirely legal in WA.
(ha! ha! this is a reply, not an edit, oh well...) also consider the possibility that they knew (as another comment said happened) she had been fired for the same thing at a previous company, and had a pattern of inflammatory tweets. This might have been the straw on the camel's back for them, not an isolated decision.
We don't know this was her first infraction as recognized by the company. We do know this was not her first infraction as recorded on her twitter account (see sibling comment about TotalBiscuit).
Since we don't have their side of the story, we can only charitably assume that ArenaNet followed their internal procedures regarding hate speech and sexism.
Did you feel the same way when Damore was fired by Google? Most people I know who are supportive of Price, were also supportive of Damore getting fired.
Damore used company channels, internally, to speak to other employees. Price used her own twitter account who's only connection was having ArenaNet in the bio.
Yup, I think Rami Ismail has pretty good take on it[1]:
> I can't believe that the official ArenaNet statement is "the company that just made a public brutal example out of you & your co-worker could've protected you from feeling harassed if you just let us know".
In such a small industry it's such a stupid move. Quick way to drive out talent from the studio.
Considering her history I doubt she didn’t had warning before this isn’t her first rodeo, this isn’t even the first time she got fired exactly for pulling this kind of BS.
But hey - all hail our corporate gaming overlords, right?