💼 Careercow Randy Pitchford / DuvalMagic - Gearbox's magical fuck-up of a CEO, lost a USB drive full of porn.

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Debrotherized Luigi said:
... Wow.

This definitely took a turn out of nowhere. I'm pretty sure Gearbox's lawyers are futilely trying to get Randy off of Twitter, because he keeps saying and doing stuff that digs him deeper and deeper into the hole he's made. I bet someone at Sega's legal team is sipping their tea out of schadenfreude as we speak, too.

Calling it now: Before 2019 is over, this fiasco (and potentially others, if the assaulting an employee at GDC is true) either ends up bankrupting Gearbox and all their IPs are liquidated to other publishers (or they become a subsidiary of a bigger company like EA or Square-Enix Europe), and/or Randy is ousted from the company he founded and unpersoned by the industry.

Because there is absolutely no way in hell the company itself can fully recover from this unless the board of directors forces Randy out as CEO and disavows him hard time. If the James Gunn fiasco from last summer is anything, once anything remotely resembling CP/pedophilia comes to public notice, the only way for a company to solve the problem is to do the nuclear option.
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Gearbox still has Borderlands 3, so the company is safe for now unless Randy refuses to leave if any of it is proven true. Just wonder if anyone really cares about Borderlands anymore, plus it's not like they have had any success launching any other ips Battleborn is most likely the biggest flop of this gen. Pretty sure Take2 own the ip as well, so pointless for anyone to buy them, would be cheaper to let the studio die and create a new one from the ashes.

Also wouldn't compare James Gunn's unfunny jokes to what could be a legit pedo, and it's debatable if firing Gunn was a good move for Disney, after all looks like GotG Vol 3 isn't happening soon if at all, no movie ready to take it's release date plus they have the money they wasted on pre production before the firing.

If it is true not sure if it would affects the sales of Borderland 3, going off how little people cared about Bryan Singer being a pedo and how well Bohemian Rhapsody did at the box office.
 
CoolGuyHitler said:
Man, Randy sure is an idiot. I'm 100% convinced Borderland's success was pure luck.
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the original idea that spawned Borderlands was basically "Mad Max but you're playing a video game and get to shoot the raiders" so it could realistically only go downhill from there. That said, Mordecai is my main man. I love headshots and his skill tree just makes them more satisfying.
 
The guy just becomes more pathetic with each Tweet.

Unbelievable. All I can do is just laugh at the guy.

https://twitter.com/bushdid911lmao/status/1084407618045644800

xDcdGJp.jpg
 
vhstape said:
Also wouldn't compare James Gunn's unfunny jokes to what could be a legit pedo, and it's debatable if firing Gunn was a good move for Disney, after all looks like GotG Vol 3 isn't happening soon if at all, no movie ready to take it's release date plus they have the money they wasted on pre production before the firing.

If it is true not sure if it would affects the sales of Borderland 3, going off how little people cared about Bryan Singer being a pedo and how well Bohemian Rhapsody did at the box office.
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The way the James Gunn thing happened, knowing Disney - I still don't think it's a firing that was based *only* on the creepy tweets and concerning blogposts. But then they also rather quietly dismissed John Lassetter after some flimsy #metoo claims too so maybe everyone's on a tightrope there right now. But still...it felt like it happened so quick after the tweet digging that I got the feeling they *wanted* an excuse in this case.

David Eddings did follow up his "It's true" tweet with clarification that he was confirming that Randy was both a con-man and probably taking more than his fair share, but that he wasn't confirming the creepy pedo story.

The evidence on Randy at this point (at least what's publically found) is pretty James Gunn levels still. There's nothing concrete, but I would say it's not really helping that each time Randy tries to "disprove" things people find leads to worse examples.

FYI: Some people were jumping to conclusions that the PA that ran off with the Pitchford's money was the same one who had seen the USB - it's not, Randy refers to a female PA in the Podcast who handled the USB, the male money grabber seems to be a different PA for the home rather than the office?
 
Good to see this company and it's employees in the spotlight. I remember when they were contacting people for closed beta before they did d a "public closed beta" They told the beta testers they wouldn't get paid for their work. That was my first and only message from them after I replied what my wages were.
 
BigRuler said:
remember you're talking about this guy
https://youtube.com/watch?v=2BmuPUiYAX8
between that and his twitter presence, i doubt he is capable of feeling any embarrassment at all. dude is absolutely shameless in every sense of the word.
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As a wide man once said "SJWs getting outed as sexual harassers/pedos/awful people is the new version of 'fundamentalist preacher caught with rent boys and cocaine'"

And unfortunately for old Randy, under his own rules showing a USB stick full of porn to everyone in the office probably counts as sexual harassment. Something he's admitted, even if he didn't admit the girl was underage.
 
CoolGuyHitler said:
Man, Randy sure is an idiot. I'm 100% convinced Borderland's success was pure luck.
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It entirely was, it came out in a time when Youtube was becoming a better place for LPs (unlimited video lengths, better video quality, more money in it) but before streaming was a viable option for a lot of people (my comp at the time could literally not run livestreams at more than like 10 fps). EDIT: So it was basically a proto meme game which was more about the ridiculousness and fun it facilitated like PUBG than the actual quality.

Nowadays the main point of the most popular LPs and livestreams is the players' personality, which was one of the reasons SA has always been so autistic about the sanctity of screenshot LPs (IT'S NOT ABOUT THE LP'ER IT'S ABOUT THE GAME REEEEE). Nowadays a game with an overbearing sense of humor which constantly pauses for exposition like Borderlands would be pure streaming hell tbh. Why the fuck would you bother with that when you can just play co-op Fortnite or something and get way more popular for fucking free?

Gustav Schuchardt said:
As a wide man once said "SJWs getting outed as sexual harassers/pedos/awful people is the new version of 'fundamentalist preacher caught with rent boys and cocaine'"
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I don't know if this was a typo or not but "wide man" is a much better way of describing Patton Oswalt than Wise Man
 
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ChevroletBlackboard said:
I imagine if this goes to court Randy will lose in a landslide. He's admitted to owning a drive of porn that he lost in the exact restaurant named in the lawsuit and is trying to deflect by saying it was just squirt porn.
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I think the USB thing will be not really be pursued, because when you really look at it, it is kinda irrelevant to the financial nature of the lawsuit.

Plus, even if the USB drive is confirmed to exist, it could well be impossible to confirm the exact contents of it, it will quickly devolve into a he-said-she-said.
Harambe said:
FFS all I want is bl3
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:optimistic: even if this whole shitstorm didn't happen lol.
 
Debrotherized Luigi said:
... Wow.

This definitely took a turn out of nowhere. I'm pretty sure Gearbox's lawyers are futilely trying to get Randy off of Twitter, because he keeps saying and doing stuff that digs him deeper and deeper into the hole he's made. I bet someone at Sega's legal team is sipping their tea out of schadenfreude as we speak, too.

Calling it now: Before 2019 is over, this fiasco (and potentially others, if the assaulting an employee at GDC is true) either ends up bankrupting Gearbox and all their IPs are liquidated to other publishers (or they become a subsidiary of a bigger company like EA or Square-Enix Europe), and/or Randy is ousted from the company he founded and unpersoned by the industry.

Because there is absolutely no way in hell the company itself can fully recover from this unless the board of directors forces Randy out as CEO and disavows him hard time. If the James Gunn fiasco from last summer is anything, once anything remotely resembling CP/pedophilia comes to public notice, the only way for a company to solve the problem is to do the nuclear option.
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Gearbox, last I checked, wasn't an S- or C- corporation, but an LLC, like Null uses to run this site. Depending on how they wrote the operating agreement, it could be anywhere from very easy to almost impossible to fire Pitchford. In any case, the LLC is on the hook for the things he does on its behalf. Politics and business don't mix. Unless you're a government contractor, which last I checked, Gearbox was not.
 
The Un-Clit said:
I gotta admit that I really enjoyed BL and BL2 until BL2's DLC which became blatantly SJW-directed, and the pre-sequel was such utter garbage that I cannot believe it was released as a professional product and not a fan-work.
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Jaimas said:
Off the top of my head:

* Axton (the Commando) of BL2 is confirmed as having been married (and attracted to girls) in his backstory and in the fucking recordings you can find throughout the game establishing his background. He was "bi" due to a programming error in Borderlands 2 (every character has class-specific dialogue with each character when they help a teammate that they're supposed to use, but don't because BL2 is coded like shit, meaning Axton uses the dialogue he's supposed to use when helping the Siren). Anthony Burch then proceeded to say he was bi all along.

* Mister Torgue, arguably the funniest fucking thing in BL2, is a fucking manchild and obviously references Macho Man Randy Savage. Multiple times in the DLC he's introduced in, he comments on how hot EVERY SINGLE CONTESTANT is (including the ladies). Burch later declared he was bi all along (this makes sense) and then later, gay (this is fucking dumb).

There's purportedly a lot more if you go digging. I refuse to put more effort into this post than Anthony Burch did with his retcons.
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The Torgue one is extremely dumb considering the quest in the Pre-sequel where Moon buggy chick tells him she’s a lesbian, and Torgue was disappointed at being friendzoned. There was some nonsense afterward but to make the jump that he’s gay?

At least my girl the Mechromancer still likes boys.
 
Streetlight Stranger said:
The Torgue one is extremely dumb considering the quest in the Pre-sequel where Moon buggy chick tells him she’s a lesbian, and Torgue was disappointed at being friendzoned. There was some nonsense afterward but to make the jump that he’s gay?
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Possibly Anthony projecting himself on Mr. Torque.
 
CoolGuyHitler said:
Man, Randy sure is an idiot. I'm 100% convinced Borderland's success was pure luck.
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Borderlands (and more importantly it's sequel) are a really interesting title. They're actually pretty unique as far as shooters go. At the time there was nothing that had the diablo esque loot mechanics in a shooter skin (diablo was in the midst of a long hiatus itself) and it emphasized the shooter aspect far more than the RPG stuff while still offering a lot of variation in builds. Even know the closest thing to borderlands is destiny which still delivers it's loot and combat in a drastically different way. Borderlands is also unique by not really limiting your choices in terms of guns. Pick the right character, and you can go the entire game with a single weapon type you really love. Not many shooters let you run the entire title with a sniper rifle or a rocket launcher, and none of them have as much content as Borderlands 2 has.

I recently spent the last few weeks running through a handful of really beloved shooters. the original half-life, system shock 2, bioshock and infinite, and when I booted up Borderlands 2 I was amazed to find that it had the most satisfying shooting of any of them. Those games have entrancing worlds and amazing atmosphere, but the shooting in most is flimsy at best. Running zer0 in Borderlands 2 was consistently satisfying, and I say that as someone who doesn't really love snipers. Enemy design in Borderlands 2 is also exactly what it should be. In a shooter you have to be able to understand an enemy's role in combat at a glance, and borderlands manages to convey that almost as well as halo and Doom do. story is whatever (a lot of it isn't as grating as I remember but it's not stellar) but it's a consistently satisfying shooter that gives you a huge amount of content to burn through and sometimes that's all you want. Of the shooters I mentioned, it's probably the closest to Doom '16 which I increasingly believe to be the greatest shooter ever made.

There's real talent and gold at Gearbox, but they're the guys in the trenches. people like Randy and Birch taint their work and it's a massive shame. Gearbox's crew made the best half-life game (opposing force) they made a great tony hawk (Pro skater 3) a fantastic Halo Port and a lengthy beloved shooter series before starting up borderlands, which are great games. Randy almost certainly has nothing to do with the quality of their games, a glorified middle man. If anything, he has kept that team from attaining the heights they could be. Had he put the team on Colonial Marines and pushed back borderlands they probably would've made a beloved little aliens game, maybe one even better than the AVP titles. Instead he stole that money to fund it's development, probably to finance the late stage overhaul he decided to put the game through. If Gearbox liquidates it'll probably be for the best because 2K will just scoop up that staff and put them onto a more competent team. Maybe the bioshock one. Hell, judging by the state of battleborn, they may have left long ago.
 
Just to clarify something - not even the lawsuit against him says Pitchford had underage porn, though by calling it 'underage' porn they're certainly trying to imply it. By his own admission it was jailbait porn - and therefore creepy enough - but it doesn't make him a pedo. Just like making bad, edgy jokes doesn't make James Gunn a pedo.

This isn't to defend him, because I'm sure he's terrible. I just would prefer if 'pedo' didn't become another 'Nazi' - a term for someone horrible that becomes diluted beyond usefulness due to applying it to everyone even remotely like it.
 
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