Indie Game Costs Developer His Job

I don't know that I'd be that quick to brush off the privacy concerns. Depending on what sort of subject matter their CSRs are privy to and the specific rules of the workplace (which, in this case, quite possibly could be ridiculously overbroad because they're intended to cover in omnibus everything from some random meatbag talking on the phone to correct an address all the way up to an auditor potentially selling information to outside entities), privacy and information disclosure rules can get pretty goddamn severe. I'm fairly sure that I'm personally required to pound myself about the head with a rubber mallet if ever I should learn the name of a contact for one of my company's customers, at least until all of that pesky remembering stops. While I suspect that the real reason the man was fired is because he badmouthed his job (I've had some shitty jobs, and the thing I've learned about shitty jobs is that you don't tell the shitty job people that the job is shitty to their face, because they tend to get a little upset if you do that, if for no other reason than they need to keep up the appearance that the job isn't shitty in order to attract more people to do the shitty job after your ass leaves, but also because in quite a lot of cases they don't think it's a shitty job - I had a manager at a fucking McDonald's of all places tell me that I needed to cheer up at work or some shit when I was permanently injuring my back in front of the grill or get fired because, as I learned, she'd been doing this pretty much her entire life and didn't much appreciate people who disagreed with her assessment of the general desirability of this career), I wouldn't be surprised if he violated the letter, or maybe even the spirit, of certain privacy rules for the workplace.

All that said, the guy got fired from a shitty job that he took because he needed the money and, in turn, got a story written about him in the newspaper that will probably score him more notice than he ever could have managed on his own. I'm not sure he doesn't end up streets ahead in this situation. Hell - if I was in charge of that agency and the guy really did make a game that was decent and funny, I'd do the same thing. This is the best thing that could happen to him, career-wise. I am one hundred percent certain that he can get another shitty job that's about the same as the job he just lost, but you can't buy the publicity he gets from the story on a shitty job salary.

Agree with Brian on this topic, you don't shit where you eat.

if I work at McDonalds, and I decided to make a game about working at McD and all my customers were fat, ugly and stupid, I then proceed to claim it's all inspired by true event , I'm pretty sure I will get fire as well.

Uhm, maybe I'm misreading the article, but he hasn't actually been fired.

he is formerly employed now according to his twitter.

One thing to consider when you work for a revenue agency is that your salary comes directly from taxes. Those same taxes get paid by taxpayers who also happen to be the customers your job is to serve in helping them pay those taxes. Y'know, the stupid people he's showing are stupid... who also happen to basically be the people who are directly paying his salary.

The privacy concerns are a stupid justification, and not really necessary to warrant the action taken. If you are Joe Canadian you may rightly wonder why you're paying somebody just so they can turn around and demonstrate what a moron you are.

Is this game about working at the CRA, or is it about working at, as the front page of the website says, "a customer service call centre?" If it's the former I think it's embarrassing for his employer an the action is understandable, but if it's the latter the game seems ok to me. Either way the privacy concerns are clearly either a trumped-up smokescreen or the result of a seriously stupid policy. He'd have to be the dumbest person alive to include anybody's actual information in the game, and if he didn't do that there's no privacy violation.

This is no different from any job. When I was doing phone tech support for an ISP, the customers I was talking to, many of whom were pretty dumb in the context of those calls, were the people who were paying my salary. Big deal. Working in a call center means alternating between putting up with stunning obliviousness and enduring nonsensical abuse, and anyone who's done it knows that the one and only way to deal with it long term without hanging yourself is to blow off steam by sharing those stories with anyone who will listen, and yes, that includes mocking the people on the other end of the line as viciously as you feel like, because that's what stops you from doing it to their face.

Only if you're also Joe Dipshit Moronnington the Fourth, because the reason you're paying them is obviously to answer your questions about your taxes or whatever it is that the CRA does. ProTip: if you're ever confused about whether or not you're paying someone to never say anything mean about you in their spare time even if they don't identify you in any way, you're not, because that's not anybody's job on Earth.

It sends a disrespectful message, I don't think anyone's privacy was violated and I'm sure he had good intentions, but even if he likes many of his customers I could understand people would be less than pleased about this. You are not really supposed to revel in this kind of venting, no matter what is thrown at you in a customer service job you need to be patient and to be kind. If you're still dealing with these people from day to day and yet build up something so big out of your daily frustrations it conflicts with this important duty.

I don't understand why he didn't register a company and arranged to release his game anonymously, this is what the main designer of Age of Decadence is doing to avoid similar attacks to his reputation.

Show of hands - who's worked retail/cs and is perfectly okay with this game, who's worked retail/cs and isn't okay with it?

I'm expecting some skewed results here.

I worked at Borders Book store/EB, I think I'm fine with company laying me off if I do something that's inappropriate and harm the position of the company I work for.

Will we even have this discussion, if he was working at job with a lot of gay people, and in his off hours, he made a game about how stupid and gay his coworker is?

Meh, I've worked retail, there is a difference between complaining about it to your friends in private conversation, and bitching about in an incredibly public venue such as the internet. It would be like me making a game making fun of how a company just like microsoft, but not microsoft, screws up. I'm sure the folks at MS wouldn't like it.

Remind me again where the game in question indulges in hate speech against a group equivalent to gay people?

It actually doesn't matter if it's a hate speech or not. The primary reason he got laid off because he insulted his company's clients, that's what his company really cares about at end, their company image.

Does he deserve getting fired/laid off? probably, he even admits that himself in the interview.

What a bootlicker. You should be ashamed of yourself.

The company that employs you does not own you.

No, because that'd be a bunch of homophobic bullshit.

This is the frustrations of customer service, getting the same god damn questions every day, the same way, with the same answers, and probably the same people. Well, if you call customers people, that's usually a mistake.

Besides, "harm the position of the company"? We're talking about a call center drone, not, for lack of a better phrasing, someone who matters. Morover, are you your own person or property of your employer? If you're not passing out trade secrets, who gives a shit?

If it doesn't matter if it's hate speech or not, then why make the equivalence claim? You should make the strongest possible, least broad claim that fully supports your arguments, and a claim that what he did is equivalent to releasing a game "about how stupid and gay his coworker is" is worlds different from what he actually did, which is to release a game about how stupid call center customers are.

Bull. Fucking. Shit.

actually, I was thinking about what company that caterer to gay people, I really can't think of one right off my head. Yeah the comparison was originally for Customer, not coworkers.

Hmm not sure what you do, but I can get fired for making public statement that damage the company I'm working at(so I only make them in private, share the hate with Joshv over mumble)..so they don't own me, but they will fire my ass, part of the employment contract..

I believed a couple years ago, one of the QA leads over at EA got fired making homophobic remarks on a gaming website, everyone was like "he deserved it".

Ooh, what a rebel you are. Some of us enjoy having a regular salary and being able to buy things and realize that you shouldn't publicly denounce the company you work for if you want to continue working there.

You wouldn't need to have "a job with a lot of gay people" for that to be a good reason to fire someone. In fact, the entire tangent you're spawning here is taking a reasonable argument (employers can fire people for doing things that embarrass them or insult customers) and spinning it off into false equivalency land. Don't do that.

You're right when you're talking about private sector jobs. Working the public sector has a different set of expectations for what's acceptable. You literally are accountable to the taxpayers themselves in a direct way that's not actually analogous to dealing with the customers of a private company.

The closest I can come to would be if you worked for a corporation and publicly declared how much disdain you had for the idiot shareholders that owned your company and how shit everything was. That would go over poorly, and you can be sure you'd wind up getting a similar result from pressure being exerted downwards.

I worked in retail through high school and for a few years just after (managing the customer service dept for the last couple). Back then I used to create Doom levels that were based on my store's footprint, stuff the maps with monsters meant to represent customers and the like, and then live vicariously through the game while my friend and I mowed the lot of them down with chainguns, shotguns and BFG9000s. I think I was most determined during the Christmas season. I made plenty of other maps too during this period, but the store provided plenty of healthy inspiration on that front.

I'm ok with the guy venting the way is as long as he was taking steps to help keep that shit from getting back to the workplace. I never posted those particular maps to my local BBSs, since it was a chain store and the footprint would have been obvious to anybody who'd been in them, and being as paranoid as I am I was convinced it would have somehow gotten back to me anyway.

He worked for the government though, so I'd be willing to admit it's really a whole different ballgame.

sorry, will not happen again.

I'd also like to add that people dealing with a private business have the option to not do business with them. It's a free market. A business might fire you to appease their customers, or not and suffer the economic blow. However, you can't "not pay your taxes", because that's not a free market. You don't get the option to go pay taxes to a different Canadian Revenue Agency because you didn't like the support agent and how they treated you. And you don't have to - the magic is public employees basically work for you - you call your representative and they contact the governor of your region and he happens to be the boss of the commissioner who happens to be the boss of every single employee at the agency. This is one of the factors why the people providing this sort of support are held to a different standard of behavior, in case that wasn't clear.

I think that's rather the point of it. You go out with coworkers and complain, you turn it into art, you find a way to vent so you don't blow the fuck up on a customer. Just think of how many great works of art have come from hating your job.

For all the shit I said and did about customers at my various workplaces, I had, 90% of the time, the happiest customers. I let it out when it didn't matter, and then I was good to go on the real deal. It's the entire basis of Retail Robin!

Worked retail for two different places; one I loved, one I hated. I'll talk to friends, acquaintances, and even friendly strangers about my job complaints for both, but I sure as hell wouldn't air my complaints loudly in public while working for that company. Making a game about how much the customers suck? And putting it out for the world to see? Lordy. I don't think it's the customers who are the dumb ones in that situation.

Making a game about how much the customers suck after leaving strikes me as tacky, but rather less stupid. I don't know. Maybe it's just because in neither of my retail jobs did I think a very high percentage of my customers were annoying. Some were occasionally, but by and large? They were people who wanted to buy stuff and move on with their lives, and I was being paid to support them in this goal. Worked out pretty well that way. In one job the company was full of frustrating idiocy, but that wasn't the fault of the customers. If anything, I wished I could've helped the customers more than stupid policies allowed me to.

There's nothing wrong with hating your job. It sucks, but it's just going to happen sometimes. And, also, in the abstract, in many cases hating your customers just comes with the territory. Sometimes there are just systemic reasons why you are at the ass end of a bad setup servicing people on their last nerve who weren't rocket scientists to start with.

But you can't vent in a manner that directly IDs you as an employee of a business, and it's only going to be tighter when it's government linked. Well, you can, but there are probably going to be consequences. And it's ok to vent about that too, and I totally understand why those of us who have done customer service in some form would have an instinctive sense of solidarity. Or, I guess, developers. But it's not a surprising outcome, and it's free advertising, and I hope it works out for him.

I don't like it, but I can imagine a bunch of exemptions even in the perfect French unfireable employee utopia where this specific case would get you canned.

Does that mean "it's real calls, except he replaced the names?" That's the easiest way he's going to get fired.

The problem isn't your acknowledgement of reality. The problem is that you approve of it. The approval is what denotes ownership. You believe it is just & proper for a company to do that. You sad little man.

O HAI, Mr Strawman. I was wondering when you'd make an appearance in this thread. You are so very popular all over the Internet, I was surprised you hadn't shown up here yet. Thank God that's been rectified.

hmm what.. wait..

the company owns me because I approve the company firing their employee if the employee damage the company?
right... that makes me sad because I believe it's alright to fire your ass if you are hurting my business.

Seems like a pretty crappy game to get fired for

If you're not a "bootlicker" according to Mark M, you're seriously fucking up your chances of holding a long-term job at most companies, especially large and/or government ones. I'm not seeing the strawman. We can't all be indie developers or own small businesses.

They're paying for ROADS and HEALTH CARE and whatever other shit you socialist Canadian bastards come up with.

Oh yes, and anti-customers have a completely different set of privacy rights.

He can make the greatest piece of art in human history and it's not going to change whether he should or does get fired.