[TRENCHES] Tuesday, August 13, 2013 - Quandary
LegionPerseus VeilRegistered User, Moderator, Penny Arcade Staff, Vanilla Staff vanilla
Quandary
http://trenchescomic.com/comic/post/quandary
We Were Here For Nothing
AnonymousWe were testing an MMORPG built on the engine of an existing MMORPG and had the usual experience of doing the same quests over and over again and submitting reports for the tiniest of things. We’d get build updates fairly regularly and never had anything out of the ordinary pop up, until one day the latest build made the game almost unplayable.
In the main “hub” area of the game, there was now an interface lag of over two seconds. Most people in QA were encountering this bug, and after many troubleshoots and acts of computer wizardry, the problem was traced to how the game interacted with the test machine video card drivers. On the next build, the issue remained. Same with the next build. When talking to the supervisor about it, we were told that the programmers were “aware of the issue”.
Still more builds, and still the issue remained. The only solution that seemed to work was to use much older video card drivers that, considering what it would do to many other games that a player might have, were not feasible for use. We brought it up to the supervisors again, and were told that the lag was “no longer considered to be a concern”.
The following week, the game went gold, and we were all let go. The manner in which we were let go was probably the worst part of working for this company; after being called in to a meeting in which we were told that the game would be going gold very soon, we discovered upon returning to our stations that we had all been given a letter where we were told that our network accounts were locked out and our biometric security keys deleted from the security system.
We were instructed in the letter to collect our personal belongings and report to the security office in the building and turn in our ID badges. Upon doing this, we were told that if anything was missing from our stations that we would be charged with theft, and if any physical or technological damage was done, we would be charged with destruction of property and vandalism. No handshakes, no thank yous, not even a wave out the door, just threats and suspicion.
Turns out not only did the game go gold and ship with that issue, but the same issue had begun to affect owners of the other graphics card maker’s hardware. In addition, the game that shared engines with the game we tested had also begun to show the exact same issue. The game suffered poor sales and bad reviews, and is considered by many players to be a disappointment and a failure.
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Don't they also have NDAs?
I think there's a reason most of these stories only refer to 'a MMORPG based on a well-known franchise'.
And the QA team that pointed out the bug? They didn't even have the backbone to let that QA team know in person they were being let go. And with no thanks for the hard work. Just a "don't try to steal from us"
As callous as this sounds, I hope someone in management for that games company got fired for making that series of poor decisions.
The comic was amusing as well.
If I were Gwen, I wouldn't have said anything in the last panel and just handed Cora a coin.
Sorry, but I have been seeing a lot of this error lately, from persons who should know better.
I feel like there has to be more to this story but I am afraid that there probably isn't. The number of companies that I know of that when an "IT" employee says they are quiting just pays out an additional 2 weeks of pay and tells them to not come back is amazing to me. I am sure what you really meant by bad decisions was "smart business" and fired you meant "promoted and given a huge bonus for saving $XXX,XXX" I am sure you are correct [sarcasm implied].
Not sure I see how that doesn't apply, then.
I blame our society's coddling of at least two generations of kids. You raise kids forbidden from any meaningful competition and wonder why they grow up entirely unable to confront others?
That's weird, because I blame our society's coddling of corporations to the point where people in management positions don't feel the need to be accountable to anyone, and certainly not their employees, because they know that repercussions which hurt the company's bottom line are impossible.
No, I don't have any actual data to back up my point, but neither do you, and my explanation makes more sense.