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Ben Kuchera's Allegations of a Toxic Work Environment at Penny Arcade
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Whether or not he has something to gain depends entirely on who he's hanging around. I'm sure some gamergaters would welcome him with open arms after trashing PA/any "mainstream" gaming site.
That being said I really do wish he'd been specific. Right now there's absolutely no specificity, no real meat to latch on to.
this was literally my biggest takeaway from the thread.
What relationship does Ben have with Gamergaters? Like where is that insinuation even coming from?
This Ben? https://www.polygon.com/2014/12/30/7460777/gamergate-2014-just-the-worst
I dunno.
You said he has nothing to gain, I'm just saying that depends entirely on who you're hanging around.
I would have preferred some actual content to the accusations. I, along with probably everyone here who's ever worked in a toxic environment, have tons of events they can recall with some degree of specifics. I'm not saying his claims have no merit, but I am saying he needs to make better claims.
PA has like 100 employees. That doesn't even meet the definition of a medium-sized business.
Gamergaters actually hate Kuchera and still think PA is on their side specifically because of how journalism averse G&T are and because of how anti-journalism/anti "censorship" the comic was the pre-GG era.
Has PA Megacorp made a response yet?
If true, and there isn't much reason to doubt him here, this is incredibly disappointing. Mike and Jerry are amongst the handful of media people I attribute with helping me get through some really dark shit in my life with their media content and this is... just damn.
I bet it's under 50
Fair, but the overall point stands, I think.
Standing up to companies isn't exactly martyrdom these days, for good or ill. And I still stand by my assertion that he desperately needs some actual examples of malfeasance, because right now PA sounds a lot like every goddamned corp on the planet.
I would be very surprised if they made any response at all. They haven't had the PAR for 8 years, they don't even do anything resembling whatever journalism they did back then, and everything with Kuchera's complaints are very vague so there's nothing to really respond to.
If they still had PAR going and Kuchera was just not involved anymore, I think they would definitely need a formal response.
A quick check of twitter doesn't show anything, but to be fair it's only 8AM on the West coast.
They are still a big business with overwhelming power in the gaming space. They run the single largest gaming convention in the world. They are a giant in their space regardless of their employee count.
They don't run PAX or even own it anymore. They're also pretty much completely irrelevant in the gaming space these days simply by virtue of how old they are. Their entrance into streaming was at the tail end of that wagon and it's basically their entire space now and even then it feels dated.
Like, the two big things they did in the space, PAX and Child's Play, are completely independent from them at this point.
The Penny Arcade Report, Famed Satirical Video Game Journalism Website, Shuts Down
Could the things he's saying now be true? Maybe. But he has a very public persona of narcissistic rage going back to his Ars Technica days. How he keeps failing upwards is beyond me. Probably the same way most sociopaths do.
is 'damn' synonymous with 'vague' in this context? because he hasn't actually said anything as near as I can tell. The only two actual specifics are a pretty huge plus for me liking PA.
This is literally nothing but things we already know they were shitty about and very vague statements. I am kind of confused at the expectation this would be a five-alarm fire that needs a response.
There definitely was. I remember being specifically about Kuchera getting tired of people asking him to cover it and putting an article whining about it. And since the whole thing happened mid-Gamergate, and that article had comments open, it had a drama explosion. Given that context, I can easily imagine PA management just deciding to be done with the whole thing, since it was not a successful experiment.
PA still has an ownership stake in PAX. They just don't run it any longer because of the size of it.
Even if they were wholly divorced of it, that still doesn't mean they don't have an inordinate amount of power in their space that doesn't have the potential to be abused.
Like, if the argument is that PA is some sort of small mom & pop shop that has no sway in the industry that is more than a bit disingenuous.
that does seem odd
I guess I'm out of the loop. The stuff yall say is common knowledge is new to me.
I don't get the "they're fucking loaded" offense. Do people who have money not deserve justice?
We are on a Penny Arcade fan site. Most people here are fans of Penny Arcade. Obviously we are going to be defensive at these accusations.
While insinuating we were callous for discounting someone's "real pain" you called them a "giant corporation" to emphasize your assertion which isn't remotely accurate in any way. That's disingenuous.
I have the exact opposite reaction, in that I think it's really weird to say "PA is totally shitty and the community is awful" based on how they publicly acted in 2013... when we're literally on the PA forums and know that things have changed since then.
Like, one of the biggest things in that RPS article is talking about how PAX is dogshit evil because of how anti-trans PA is, and how does that seem accurate to you at all? PAX is quite possibly the best general-audiences convention for LBGT issues I've ever seen.
My reaction isn't so much that I don't believe Mike and Gerry could be dicks to Kuchera, but that this is dead and buried drama where the only thing we can do is relitigate Dickwolves.
I'm not. I'm a fan of this community but have long since grown out of the content PA produces.
I kind of don't think Mike is a very good person based on his track record and have long thought he should step away from the business based on things he's said.
Dickwolves is the most relevant thing PA ever did besides PAX, so that is surprising for somebody on the PA forums.
It's not an offense.
It's that they don't need me, a random internet dude, charging to their rescue.