Evil Genius Games bleeding personnel?

[FrogReaver]

You seem really invested on changing the topic of the thread here. Tedious trolling is tedious. You've had your answers on the speculation trolling. Move along.

I will not tolerate accusations of trolling. If you want to reply to me then please stop that.

 

[Sacrosanct]

The list grows...

 

[Evil Genius Games]

I think that the one thing I would note is that the Ethical Code posted by Evil Games was posted yesterday, February 6, 2024.

After the resignations.

It is obviously difficult to say absent more information about what, exactly, led to the resignations. However, given that there were references to ethics in the resignations, and that this blog post is referred to as a Technology Code of Ethics, and the curious timing, I have to admit that I am inferring a causal relationship.

Hi Snarf. We made the decision not to do AI in October, and then not to do Web 3 in December. But apparently, it wasn't enough to allay any concerns. So after the resignations, we brought the team together to discuss. And we felt a public and permanent statement on this issue would be useful. That's why we drafted the code of ethics after the fact.

 

[Evil Genius Games]

I feel like this is the heart of the matter. EGG certainly hasn't made it clear to their fans and customers that data harvesting and reselling has been a part of their business model. Not being upfront to your customers that you are selling their data to license holders as part of their market research is unethical, this clearly goes beyond just tracking sales behavior on their website. This is type of service that normally involves paid focus groups or costly mass surveys, so EGG is in essence making their customers unknowing, unpaid focus groups and collecting all the money from it. That doesn't sit right with me.

Hi El Spiko, we are not selling, giving away, or sharing any data that we have on our customers. It's clear in our privacy policy and I will make it clear in our code of Ethics.

 

[Umbran]

This implies the people quit because of the AI and Blockchain policies. Is this what you are trying to say?

Mod note:
Hey. That's corporate confidential information. You should not expect a straight answer to that, and faulting someone for not giving you what you want to hear when that answer should perhaps get them fired is not cool.

Is it ever unethical to ask someone a question that they cannot ethically provide an actual answer for?

You aren't EN World's arbiter of ethical conduct, so you probably need to stop acting like you are right about now. Your pursuit of the "gotcha" here is also uncool.

Both of you, please let your ends of this issue drop, and move on.

 

[JLowder]

Mod note:
Hey. That's corporate confidential information. You should not expect a straight answer to that, and faulting someone for not giving you what you want to hear when that answer should perhaps get them fired is not cool.



You aren't EN World's arbiter of ethical conduct, so you probably need to stop acting like you are right about now. Your pursuit of the "gotcha" here is also uncool.

Both of you, please let your ends of this issue drop, and move on.

I was asking for a clarification for what was already stated, which, in itself, implied confidential information. (This was also the company owner making the post implying information about ex-staff, not an employee who can be fired.) I asked for clarification of meaning, not supporting confidential information.

 

[technoextreme]

So six months to set up an Organized Play program seems a bit short doesn't it?

 

[Evil Genius Games]

So six months to set up an Organized Play program seems a bit short doesn't it?

Yes. Michael Bramnik did a hell of a job setting it up. He started in March.

 

[sigfried]

Hey folks. I'm the lead game designer at Evil Genius Games.

I figured I'd share a bit as someone who is still working at the company. I'm not dishing out juicy details here, just trying to clear up a few things.

I 100% respect my colleagues who chose to resign, and those who had been let go earlier. These are all good people. The same is true for everyone who is still working for EGG. It's not uncommon for good people to look at the same situation and think and feel different things. The hobby gaming business has always had its share of drama. The confluence of a meaningful and personal hobby mixed with the realities of business make for some very complex and stressful situations.

I love some drama and debate myself, but it is kind of sad to see folks on the outside argue over the particulars of our own issues. It's both stressful for the folks in the company, and it just feels like our problems get taken up by others only to be made less happy for it. I am in the hobby to have fun with make believe drama and to solve make believe problems using cunning. The real live drama and problems aren't so much fun.

I'm not privy to conversations between my colleagues and Dave. I can't answer for either. I'll speak a bit to the issue surrounding Crypto and AI since that is probably the straw the broke the Camel's back so to speak. The owner is a gamer like us, but not well connected to gamer culture like this message board. He worked as an Amazon marketing executive and is immersed in that culture. He is excited by new technologies and ideas that could take his gaming company from a small start up to a big success. He didn't know a lot about crypto or AI other than the hype surrounding those technologies in the finance world. These technologies are largely an anathema to gaming culture (though there are a range of opinions). Dave got a lesson from us staff on these topics over the last few months. The result is the technology ethics policy we put out where we promise not to utilize AI or Blockchain/Crypto/Web3 etc...

So why do people leave when we have that policy? It comes down to trust and how strongly you feel about those technologies even being considered and debated. Those who left, I think, largely lost trust with Dave for a range of reasons, but that lack of trust was made into an ethical concern by the technology questions. They made the right call in that they felt that this relationship was no longer viable and they stood on their principles. Dave has publicly expressed here that he respects their choice as well, even if he may not agree with or understand it fully. Yes, the policy was put out partly because people left, thought he conclusions were decided far earlier with AI. Taking a stand like that can be a very persuasive argument!

So what about me? Well, I started with Evil Genius to make a game and I, and my design/writing partner Goober did that. I'm really proud of the game, and it's fans really seem to enjoy playing it. That gives me a lot of joy, and it's what I'm still committed to. I will make a personal promise that I'll stick to the code of ethics EGG has offered as well as hold the company to that code so long as I'm working here. I feel Crypto has no place in the world of hobby games. Its not a good technology for what we do and there are too many predatory people who use it to ill ends. AI is a more complex subject for me, but I'm sticking to EGGs stated code as well and will work to ensure EGG products don't knowingly include AI art or text. (its very hard to ensure that 100% when working with remote contractors so I can only promise intent, its possible someone could deceive us) If I ever feel the company is betraying the fans, behaving in a bigoted fashion, or being intentionally crewel to anyone, I'll also step away.

Last thing: The Linked in post was made by one of our investors to attract other investors. The part about sharing data was not true to my knowledge. We don't actually collect any detailed data beyond the usual stuff an online store would keep, and we don't sell it or share it to anyone. Marketing people like to use industry buzzwords with little regard to reality when marketing to other marketing people. As mentioned, the world of business and grass roots hobby don't always mix terribly well.

OK, that's that, back to work making games for me.

 

[theliel]

Last thing: The Linked in post was made by one of our investors to attract other investors. The part about sharing data was not true to my knowledge. We don't actually collect any detailed data beyond the usual stuff an online store would keep, and we don't sell it or share it to anyone. Marketing people like to use industry buzzwords with little regard to reality when marketing to other marketing people. As mentioned, the world of business and grass roots hobby don't always mix terribly well.

That's not terribly comforting, because either that investor is making public statements with (alleged) material misrepresentations designed to induce investment or EGG isn't doing so now but the investors have plans to do so in the future as part of an existing business strategy so that EGG can generate the exceptional rate of return demanded by venture capital investors.

I'd love to see what said investor's Pitch Deck looks like, what business segment the investor thinks EGG is in, the market size, what amount of the market they intend to capture, and projected returns & % of market share. Of course unless said investor's delivered a pitch at a public event (startups do these pitches constantly, so much so that there are regional events for founders to practice at w/a nominally friendly audience), we're almost certainly never going to see it.

If said investor doesn't understand that EGG is incapable of monetizing that data from either technical or legal limitations, then you have a case where an investor soliciting investments into one of their businesses so misunderstands what they've invested in that they've managed to be indistinguishable from a bad actor.