Evil Genius Games bleeding personnel?

Hey folks, I'm seeing a lot of speculation and discussion of specifics. I don't feel it would be productive for me to jump in and start discussing those.

However, as I would hope my public statements have already made clear, I am not one to stand back and watch.

In my role as CPO of Evil Genius Games, I was privy to many of the decisions & actions made by the CEO. That is confidential information however, which I'm contractually not allowed to share.

Currently my focus is on providing support for ex-employees, who are dealing with emotional & psychological trauma, as well as helping people with networking to find new roles. In my mind, these are the actions of a leader who cares about people.

awen said:

From the information at hand, then—and whether correctly or incorrectly—I can infer only that my former colleagues held personal principles that they believed the company had violated. Three of them worked closely together, and were friends as well as colleagues, and so it would not surprise me if they shared certain common principles. And, if there were issues at EGG that violated their personal principles, then I fully support their decisions to leave the company. In fact, I have left jobs because of conduct that I could not ethically condone.

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I wanted to address this in longer form, but since Morrus is doing independent work, and Faith Elisabeth Lilley has just commented, I will be brief.

As a general rule, when there is an internal dispute within a company, it is usually best for the company to say nothing. Even if other people are saying things, the story will go away eventually. Attempting to spin without providing any specifics will just keep the story alive. To use the old saying, "It is better to be thought a fool than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt." Regardless of the correctness (or lack thereof) of the company's position, very little is gained, and a lot can be lost, by doing anything other than, "We wish them the best of luck in all future endeavors."

Next, given that you have stated your bona fides with regard to ethics, I am sure you are familiar with the concept of willful blindness. While the concept has (obviously) been much more adapted to its use in the law, it's one most people are familiar with. As a general rule, if many of my friends and colleagues resigned from the company that I work for stating that they had ethical issues with the company, I think that it would be important, for me, to understand the reason that they made such a drastic decision. After all, in our capitalist society, resigning for a moral or ethical principle is a statement, and if it is made by several people, that's something I would need to understand. It would neither be sufficient nor acceptable .... for me ... to simply say that maybe the company violated their principles, but I don't need to find out what the violations were.

Some ethical issues have clear-cut answers. Some don't. But I wouldn't feel comfortable writing a long comment regarding the ethics of a situation I was close to which basically ended in a shrug, with the basic premise that I had no idea what the actual dispute was over even though it involved the small company I worked for and my friends. Because either you do have actual knowledge (in which case this post comes off very poorly), or you don't have actual knowledge, in which case this post seems like a long exercise in "nothing to see here," which cannot be an accurate assessment if you don't know what the issue is.

Rusty_Shackleford said:

I did some research into Evil Genius Games' venture capital and found their funding information on crunchybase.com. I noticed that one of their investors is called Blockchain Founders Fund. Can we honestly believe someone that says they won't use blockchain technology when one of their investors is called 'Blockchain Founders Fund' and the blockchain portion of their "Technology Code of Ethics" ends with, "as of now" implying its going to happen eventually? So...does it happen 6 months from now? A year? When they think people have forgotten about all of this?

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This has already been brought up multiple times in this thread. Yes, it is relevant to note but as already been mentioned, there are other reasons for investing including diversifying a portfolio. So, it is noteworthy, but not some "gotcha" proving their stated technology policy is necessarily deceitful. "As of now" does not necessarily imply anything. So, the investment by this fund is noteworthy and worth keeping in mind watching the company's actions in the future, but not proof of anything in and of itself.

Snarf Zagyg said:

I wanted to address this in longer form, but since Morrus is doing independent work, and Faith Elisabeth Lilley has just commented, I will be brief.

As a general rule, when there is an internal dispute within a company, it is usually best for the company to say nothing. Even if other people are saying things, the story will go away eventually. Attempting to spin without providing any specifics will just keep the story alive. To use the old saying, "It is better to be thought a fool than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt." Regardless of the correctness (or lack thereof) of the company's position, very little is gained, and a lot can be lost, by doing anything other than, "We wish them the best of luck in all future endeavors."

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Just to note: ‘we wish them the best’ is mostly what has been communicated.

Snarf Zagyg said:

Next, given that you have stated your bona fides with regard to ethics, I am sure you are familiar with the concept of willful blindness. While the concept has (obviously) been much more adapted to its use in the law, it's one most people are familiar with. As a general rule, if many of my friends and colleagues resigned from the company that I work for stating that they had ethical issues with the company, I think that it would be important, for me, to understand the reason that they made such a drastic decision. After all, in our capitalist society, resigning for a moral or ethical principle is a statement, and if it is made by several people, that's something I would need to understand. It would neither be sufficient nor acceptable .... for me ... to simply say that maybe the company violated their principles, but I don't need to find out what the violations were.

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Why do you assume no attempt has been made to find out?

And if an earnest attempt has been made to find out why is going off the info one has unethical? I mean… isn’t that exactly what everyone in this thread is doing? Speaking about the ethicalness or unethicalness of a situation they have even less info on than the people posting.

Snarf Zagyg said:

Some ethical issues have clear-cut answers. Some don't. But I wouldn't feel comfortable writing a long comment regarding the ethics of a situation I was close to which basically ended in a shrug, with the basic premise that I had no idea what the actual dispute was over even though it involved the small company I worked for and my friends. Because either you do have actual knowledge (in which case this post comes off very poorly), or you don't have actual knowledge, in which case this post seems like a long exercise in "nothing to see here," which cannot be an accurate assessment if you don't know what the issue is.

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Comes across as another ‘nothing they say can be right/good/ethical’. I guess that goes along with your earlier concerns to just saying nothing. But if they were saying nothing then that would be wrong/bad/unethical to someone too. They would owe everyone an explanation. Etc. etc.

Personally, what I would love to see is everyone apply their own ethical standards to themselves before applying them to others. But I’m not the ethics police, so can’t make anyone - an occasional suggestion towards this ideal seems fair though.

kenmarable said:

This has already been brought up multiple times in this thread. Yes, it is relevant to note but as already been mentioned, there are other reasons for investing including diversifying a portfolio. So, it is noteworthy, but not some "gotcha" proving their stated technology policy is necessarily deceitful. "As of now" does not necessarily imply anything. So, the investment by this fund is noteworthy and worth keeping in mind watching the company's actions in the future, but not proof of anything in and of itself.

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Yep. As far as I can tell:

Everyone involved seem like decent folks
There is no proof Mr. Scott used AI, blockchain, or sold customer information, and he has assured that he would not.

Here's the thing though, you (general you) don't need proof to feel like there might be a problem. We do it all the time. I will fully admit it might not be fair to Mr. Scott and EGG, but that's reality with businesses. Because we also know:

A blockchain and AI investor is a major investor into EGG
An investor of EGG publicly stated their intent with customer data
Several employees have all resigned stating the same reason (ethical concerns)

It is true that EGG has not been proven to have done anything wrong and also true for the above, which are red flags. I am only speaking for myself now, and will be using generic terms. If a CEO says they aren't doing things that their investors want them to do and investors have said themselves what they expect the company to do, that makes me worried that the company will end up doing that thing (me personally, as I understand others have no problems with a company using AI or selling customer data). And when several employees start resigning, that makes it more worrying.

So really, I think it all comes down to an individual person on what they are comfortable with when supporting a company. A person can be wary of supporting EGG while at the same time EGG not doing anything wrong. Just like someone can be happy supporting EGG even if they do end up using AI or selling customer data. It's something subjective as personal ethics. I've heard Mr. Scott's reassurances. I have no reason to not believe or trust him. It's also fair for me to still have reservations based on what the investors are saying because I know what influence investors traditionally have (EGG might be an exception, but we never know until time goes by).

I'd rather avoid the he said/they said part of this discussion because as mentioned, some folks can't tell their story, some don't want to rehash it, and often these things devolve into speculation and hurt feelings. I don't want anyone involved to have hurt feelings; that's not fair to them. For me, right now, I think that's the highest priority--how these folks are being impacted, and respecting the difficulty they are going through. I really want to avoid using these folks as "ammunition" to gotcha the other side. These are people, not data points.

I have been engaged in some solid research and information gathering over the past day or two. I hope to be able to share the results of that soon.

@Snarf Zagyg

If you want to wait for additional info I will as well.

Edit in response to quoted posters edit.

@Faith Elisabeth Lilley welcome to the boards. Even if you joined to comment to this thread specifically, hope you add more to other threads.

Not sure if this is a "valid" response but... not sure what the drama is about...
I live in Israel and we are in a state of war for four months and counting with 136 hostages. Ukraine has been invaded by Russia almost two years ago and the war is still ongoing with magnitudes of orders more killed, tortured and kidnapped.

This really seems like a "First World problem" - Commercial use of AI or blockchain tech, even if it caused someone to quit a company, is such a relatively minor issue if I look at what my country (and ordinary Palestinians) is going through and even worse for Ukrainians.
IMHO, definitely not a reason to bash a company (try to look at companies who avoid sanctions on russia etc..)