I’m done.
After covering the debacle surrounding “World of Warships” for at least a month, I believe I have been pushed to the point of no return. By which I mean, I am simply over it. Wargaming, the company that publishes WoWS (and World of Tanks, as well as World of Warplanes), simply has lost me as a customer, as well as a blogger/podcaster who gives a damn about their games any longer.
Now I know Wargaming has done some pretty egregious things in the past, but they have at least made some attempt to reach out to the community and offer some measure of amends for their behavior. Sort of, but for WeeGee, this was a pretty big step. I actually thought that the upper management overseeing World of Warships were going to take this seriously, and take solid steps towards fixing the mistakes they have made toward how they manage their community.
… and then they brought out the Scapegoat.
Elias Grodin, and very popular Community Manager with Wargaming, got fired by WeeGee in response to the whole HMCS Yukon kerfuffle, which actually prompted the mass-exodus of 30 Community Contributors to quit that program in August. Not the firing, but the mishandling of the Yukon issue, and how LittleWhiteMouse was treated by WoWS Staff.
Thing is, the staff being abusing and whatnot did not include Grodin. Elias wasn’t even working on the Yukon project anymore, having moved over to the World of Tanks team last Spring, and was described by LWM as being very supportive.
So, here’s what appears to have happened: The WoWS staff get called onto the carpet over the mishandling of the Yukon (and Huron) projects with LWM, which led to the Community Contributor program losing the vast majority of its most influential members. Said WoWS staff then point the finger at a guy who left their team months before, because… he’s an easy target, I suppose? So now that guy gets fired, when he literally had nothing to do with the problem.
In response, the Senior Manager for Community and Events over on the World of Tanks team, Zachary Doig – who was also Grodin’s boss the last few months – has resigned in protest over this clearly-unjust firing. In his farewell letter to the community, Doig basically ripped the upper management at Wargaming collectively a new asshole, as was due.
The folks who engineered this firing of Grodin were (in my opinion) simply trying to deflect the blame for this cascading wall of bullshit, that they themselves caused to happen, by getting someone fired that hadn’t been on their team for months. That is extremely cowardly, but far from surprising, considering how Wargaming operates.
You all know I like to cover stories where gaming companies commit egregious acts, but at some point, they go too far. This was my limit. I don’t see myself covering any stories regarding Wargaming or their games ever again. Not here in my Blog, not on the “Loot Mechanics” podcast.
They say that even bad publicity is good publicity, because at least people are talking about you. Well, that ends here, when it comes to this website and our shows.