Asked someone I know about this who is in game deving to some extent that I know hates his guts about why he never said anything.
Their response pretty much was, "The backlash would be too much. Being the first person to do it gets you the most arrows from angry savages."
Comes down to would you rather be openly right about someone? Or be employed?
I'm not sure if this is common knowledge now, so forgive me if everyone already knows this, but here's what I knew about the gaming industry from the late 2000's to the early 2010's.
The gaming industry was a tough industry to break into as demand for jobs was at an all time high. The majority of the game studios were located in a handful of cities across North America, most commonly on the west coast. People working in the game industry were passionate about their jobs, and game studios would frequently abuse that passion. Crunch was accepted as part of the job, and you were expected to work 60-100 hours per week for weeks or months on end just to meet a deadline. It was not uncommon to see people sleeping under their desks.
Only after working diligently and meeting their final deadlines ("going gold") to ship a game do you then have to start worrying about layoffs. Layoffs were almost guaranteed for anyone who wasn't a senior member of staff and because layoffs happened so frequently it was common for people to shuffle between studios. Entire teams would be gutted all at once and you'd suddenly be fighting your old coworkers to get a job at a nearby studio. If you were an industry veteran, or networked really well, you would likely know someone whose already working at your neighboring studio which would significantly increase your odds of getting hired.
If you weren't lucky enough to find a job after getting laid off you had three options:
- Wait and see if conditions improve at your local studios.
- Apply for jobs at another city and move. If you're unlucky, you're moving to Canada. If you're really unlucky, you're moving overseas.
- Cut your losses and leave the industry (this is the most sensible, yet riskiest option).
Leaving the game industry was a difficult pill to swallow and normally practiced by people who are burnt out. Speaking only on behalf of video game artists, the sheer amount of niche information you had to learn, as well as proprietary tools and workflows really limited your career options outside the video game industry. The most common lateral move by artists was to move into working on film and television, however conditions weren't better and artists were just as abused in that industry. Beyond that your choices were limited to working to niche areas like architecture firms, automotive concepts, or government simulations. You could technically earn money by making and selling assets on TurboSquid, but I've never heard of any artist making more than a few hundred dollars a month.
Now because you've backed yourself into a corner and have no other real career options, the video game industry can enact a set of unwritten rules that you must obide by. Failure to obey these rules will result in you becoming "blacklisted" from the industry, which can end your career. The threat of becoming blacklisted was taken
very seriously. I've heard anecdotes of some studios maintaining a Black Book with names shared across studios to make sure blacklists are enforced.
Blacklisting mostly relied on anecdotal, "trust me bro", evidence. As such, only industry veterans could successfully blacklist someone of equal or lesser status as them. Without a lawsuit or significant public scrutiny, it would be impossible for someone to blacklist a more senior member than themselves. If you were blacklisted by someone at one studio and still managed to get a job at a rival studio, the person blacklisting you could call your new studio and try to get you fired.
As I understood it back then, there were a few common rules most people would agree by: Do not steal another artists work and claim it as your own, do not lie about your qualifications, do not break your NDA, do not steal intellectual property, and maintain professional conduct. The part where blacklisting gets fucky is how you define "professional conduct", because that can vary wildly depending what city and studio you work in.
Calling someone out online, even with good intentions, would be seen as unprofessional conduct or an attempt to blacklist. If you don't have significant support from your peers, you could be drawing a target on yourself.
