Indie Game Costs Developer His Job

Well, it looks pretty shitty so I'm not sure I can be arsed. Speculating about why he got booted is more fun.

Also, including a phrase that someone really said in real life does not constitute a privacy violation. If someone really calls you and says the words "why can't I just not pay my taxes" (for example), and you report it as "Hi, my name is Dick Dangle Dingleberry, my Canadian-version-of-a-social-security-number is 8==-==-===D, and I'm a big stupid moron and why can't I just not pay my taxes, PS I'm ugly too," you have not violated that person's privacy because presumably all of that identifying information is fake.

Hey! That's not fair! I didn't use your real name!

Also, here's why the "privacy concerns" are bullshit: if there were an actual violation of someone's privacy in this game, there'd be legal action, right? I mean, I don't know for sure how it works in Canada but at every job I've had in the US that includes access to sensitive information (which has been several), it's been made pretty clear that the penalty for sharing that information with the world goes well beyond simply losing the job.

I agree that the privacy thing is a red herring. Like, I understand why it was in the spokesperson's initial response, but with the information currently available it does not seem an important variable.

It depends on how you define it. A privacy violation in the legally binding sense might only exist between, say, a lawyer and a client for dumb things they say. But a privacy violation in terms of what customers expect from a company (and thus a company expects from its employees) is a much more flexible concept, where mocking something that many people identify is not as important but still relevant as compared to something that is directly, individually identifiable. This gets murkier but no better when you are dealing with public entities that already have inherent PR problems and the "customers" are forced to interact with them. Basically, "don't start things if you expect to keep your job and your company thinks of you as disposable" is still applicable in that aspect.

It's still something that the organization was right to be concerned about, and given the uneven reporting it's completely unsurprising that the initial misleading impression of the story hasn't been amended by the reporter who keeps drilling for things to stir up.

Anything's possible, and I agree with you that we don't know anything about the firing cause per se. But I would be wary of getting too far into "just asking questions" territory because there's really nothing to be gained from it. It's part of why I was uncomfortable with the whole "was this legal" angle.

That's my point - you can't even tell without herculean efforts whether it's real stories or not. So from a regulatory perspective, "don't talk shit about your customers in a sensitive relationship at all" is the right approach.

Man, I clearly shouldn't have phrased it as a question.

Anyway, your question pretty clearly answers itself: it is just as bad and criminal for their employees to release real information to the public, whether it's anonymous or not. They obviously should worry about it a lot! For example, they might make their employees sign something that says they won't do that. But there is zero correlation with some relating a fictional account of their experiences there and someone releasing real data; in fact, it's far more likely that someone who didn't sign their name to it is releasing real data.

Therefore, they should FIRE ALL THE OTHER EMPLOYEES and rehire this guy.

(The actual answer to my question, and the reason my question was rhetorical, is that there is zero evidence that either Gallant or any other employees have released any real data, and thus this is no basis for firing anyone in the first place.)

I was actually thinking along the same lines, except my reasoning is that they should give him the budget to develop his game into a training tool.

I think there are a few different levels on which this conversation is happening. For instance, while I think the firing is pretty much bullshit, I don't think it's surprising, and I don't know if anyone here does. The guy who made the game certainly doesn't, given his statements beforehand. I think that Reldan is probably right that the guy expected to lose the job (which was low-paying I'm sure and which he obviously hated anyway) and just figure he might as well get paid for an extra few weeks while his bosses arrive at the inevitable conclusion. I have no issue with the people in this thread who are saying "well duh, if you're going to do that you should obviously expect to get fired" other than that they may not have read his statement in which he pretty much said that yes, he did expect to get fired, and I think he knows that he's better off for it.

What I take issue with is more the ideas that a) this kind of firing is morally just and deserved, rather than simply what we've come to expect, and b) that releasing this game constitutes a serious ethical misstep on the author's part, for various reasons possibly including this supposed breach of privacy. I think that yes, doing this kind of thing publicly is very likely to lead to losing one's job, but I don't think that anything that (understandably) rankles your employer is necessarily a bad thing to do.

Which it sounds like it kind of already is, right?

Yeah, which is what made me think of it. It needs better artwork and the penalty for a wrong choice needs to be changed to something less drastic, but I can't help feeling that the CRA are missing a trick here.

If the CRA doesn't do it, some dedicated call center company should. The rules might vary slightly but the hard parts of call center work are universal: not losing your cool and not divulging more information than you should.

You're absolutely right that there was no ambiguity. But I was making a limited claim (unambiguously, in fact) and Hanacker has been arguing with a position I never made claim to. So... no need to amend my position; it hasn't changed. But it would be nice if Hanacker were to argue against what I said, rather than what he imagines me to say.

Hint: I never claimed that idrisz (or anyone else for that matter) had any obligation to sacrifice their livelihood on the altar of principle. My only claim was about what the just principle was.

You misunderstand me. I'm not claiming that Hanacker is arguing in bad faith. Just that he's mistaken about what I'm claiming in the first place... largely because he's not reading carefully.

Doesn't it boil down in large part to whatever he signed when he was hired, vis a vis confidentiality/representative of company agreements? I mean it might all be there somewhere with his John Cockhand under it that says "Nossir, I'd never misrepresent the company nor deliberately publicly paint it in a bad light while under its employ."

There's a reason people do these sorts of things after they quit or are fired. We can argue about whether or not that's "fair" or whatever ideal standard we are discussing here, but who the hell wants to run a company - or work at a company - that allows its employees to say whatever they like about it? What if this guy is a lying asshole? And even if he isn't (I doubt he is FWIW), what if the next guy isn't? What if the next guy or girl includes his shitty coworkers and one of them is named Snarles Quandall?

Which companies should this be allowed for, any all of them? Should employees with less-than-sincere motives be allowed to shit-talk their place of employ while drawing paychecks from them despite them being shitty employees whom all their coworkers wish would shut the fuck up and do their job, and maybe if it's not too much trouble show up on time and not call out sick every other Friday?

Not every company is a mean thuggish brute and not every employee is Bob Cratchett begging for Jus' one mo' lump of coal, Mistuh Scrooge, please sir. If you believe that and I doubt anyone truly does, then you've never worked with, for, or over asshat employees, which is statistically impossible in most parts of the world.

Also that game looks fuckin' terrible. He should be fired for making a shitty game.

I guess given the rest of the paragraph I just don't see the bullshit part of it. Person who wants to get fired does something likely to get them fired, and gets fired. Do you mean bullshit in some broader existential sense of what a person ought to have to do to get by?

Well, I'm with you as far as most of (b), although again I think that's largely something that got out of hand from its initial appearance in boilerplate spokesperson responses to scandal. I just haven't seen many strong claims towards (a), especially once the legality question more or less fizzled out from lack of useful information, which is why I find it confusing when abstract notions of right and wrong suddenly enter the picture as a response to the initial vein of "this a wrongful/extraordinary/etc type of firing". But in general I think your summary is accurate.

If all you were stating was your opinion on where the abstract notion of justice leans in this case, I doubt anyone would have given a shit because the same thing has been nested in other people's posts and is largely uncontroversial. But that's not why anyone bothered.

This, where you take ordinary, routine statements about what your responsibilities are as an employee if you want to continue to be employed, and call him a bootlicker that ought to be ashamed of himself. You sound like an internet tough guy halfway through his first read of Atlas Shrugged. It's fucking bullshit, along the lines of claiming that people that pay their taxes and vote are sheeple or, hell, let's go back a bit further and brand them capitalist running dogs. The ideology doesn't really matter to a true believer.

Which I don't think you are.

Again, your meaning was crystal clear, and the point is that your approach is in bad faith. No one is really taking issue with the "justice" of the case as you present it, but rather with your adoption of slurs to characterize the ethical backbone of people who are making fairly straightforward comments about the usual standards businesses and government agencies operate under.

It looks terrible, and it's a glorified dialog tree in terms of the actual gameplay. But the writing and audio stuff isn't half bad, and it has a certain charm towards its goal. The game video Adree linked above seems to give a good impression of it. I don't know, this style of game really never appeals to me but I give it a solid 2.5 Jonblows.

On no....someone is on to me!!!

Sure, and we don't know if/what that was.

Wait, so you do know what people are signing?

Basically, this is just begging the question. People do this thing anonymously for fear of what might happen, regardless of whether what might happen is fair or legal or just or what rights they might have or whether it's even likely to happen--just from their belief it might (which is based on what? media reports? fictional media depictions)?

I mean, people are terrible about knowing what their rights (and others) are (or standing up for them), e.g. witness all the bullshit over photographing buildings in public and stuff like that. People taking pictures of buildings (or whatever is the latest dumb thing) should expect to be hassled by security about it, and if they stand their ground they might be assaulted by the security, have their camera damaged, etc., but that doesn't make the action of that security right, just, or legal; and some people see it as appropriate to take those risks and do it even while expecting it.

I'm not saying this game is an act of civil disobedience, I'm just saying there is a lot of weird conflation in this thread between us, or him, or them knowing they would try to fire him and just about anything else (such as whether they should have, whether it was legal, etc). So yes, there's a reason people do this sort of thing after they quit or are fired, because they don't want to take the risk. But that's not evidence that they've signed away that right (as your two coupled paragraphs seem to be implying).

I mean, I have no idea! Maybe it's totally legit for them to fire him on this basis[*]. I just find it bizarre that people are assuming it is by default.

[*} I suspect not, since it's the government. Maybe a company can make you give up the right to criticize them, but if a government makes you give up the right to criticize them for employment, that seems pretty broken. But I'm no expert in Canadian free speech, either.

Except he gets this call every day.

And I think you underestimate how seriously tax offices take even potential privacy violations.

There's always the potential for legal issues with any of these situations, whether warranted or not. There's very few situations with public employment where he wouldn't have the opportunity to appeal the decision regardless of how cut and dry the grounds of dismissal might be. That he has the decision to pursue that action says literally nothing about anything.

Story in the Torontoist

ALERT! THE TAXMAN'S COVER HAS BEEN BLOWN!