epithet
Explorer
Consequences for ones actions is not being picked on.
It appears to me that more than a few people were arguing that Mearls should face consequences for someone else's actions. It seems that people looking for something about which to be outraged have found Zak, who provides plenty of transgression to fuel that fire. The problem is that Zak is the sort of person you can't really bully, because he doesn't seem to care about anyone else's opinion of him and he will gleefully and aggressively go after people who speak out against him. That leaves Mike, a genuinely decent and pleasant guy who can be (and, I'm sure, has been) hurt by the vitriol hurled at him recently, and WotC which is a company that seems to prioritise the expression of trendy and modern social values.
One of the reasons 5e is such a runaway success is that WotC took the time to reach out to the OSR crowd and find out what made OSR products popular. After all, the objective of 5e was to give the D&D market what we wanted to buy. At the time, the reasonable (in my opinion) belief was that if the D&D brand was to be revived, the focus needed to be on the quality of the product as a game system, and not on trying to only work with people who check all the right boxes for social values and enlightened behavior. I've never played a game using one of Zak's products, but the one thing I know about them is they were popular and well received. He can be a scumbag and still make a good product.
In the end, Hasbro almost certainly is delighted with the end result of consulting with the OSR game designers, including Zak. The resulting product has outperformed their most ambitious hopes, and they're very happy indeed with the performance of the entire team, including Mike. They are also a soulless corporation that is entirely willing to throw a valuable employee--one who has made them truckloads of money--under the bus to help the marketing department recruit and appease the "influencers" that seem to drive sales these days. That's why I worry about Mike--I know he's a good guy and a valuable cornerstone of the D&D team, and I know that the folks that sign the checks all know that. I also have no confidence that they would hesitate to offer him up on the altar of social media as a conspicuous display of en vogue social values.