Goodman Games: Our Efforts Have Been Mischaracterized

Goodman Games' CEO Joseph Goodman made a statement via YouTube over the weekend*. The video itself focused on the content of the controversial upcoming City State of the Invincible Overlord crowdfunding product, but was prefaced by a short introduction by Joseph Goodman, in which he reiterates his company's commitment to inclusivity and diversity and its opposition to bigotry, something which they say they "don't want to be associated with".

Goodman goes on to say that the company's efforts have been "mischaracterized by some folks" but does not go so far as to identify the mischaracterization, so it's not entirely clear what they consider to be untrue other than the "inaccurate" statements made by Bob Bledsaw II of Judges Guild about Goodman Games' plans, which Goodman mentioned last week.

For those who haven't been following this story, it has been covered in the articles Goodman Games Revives Relationship With Anti-Semitic Publisher For New City State Kickstarter, Goodman Games Offers Assurances About Judges Guild Royalties, and Judges Guild Makes Statement About Goodman Controversy. In short, Goodman Games is currently licensing an old property from a company with which it claimed to have cut ties in 2020 after the owner of that company made a number of bigoted comments on social media. Goodman Games has repeatedly said that this move would allow them to provide backers of an old unfulfilled Judges Guild Kickstarter with refunds, but there are many people questioning seeming contradictions in both the timelines involved and in the appropriateness of the whole endeavour.

Despite the backlash, the prospects of the crowdfunding project do not seem to have been harmed. The pre-launch page has over 3,000 followers, and many of the comments under the YouTube videos or on other social media are not only very supportive of the project, but also condemn those who question its appropriateness. In comparison, the original (failed) Judges Guild Kickstarter had only 965 backers.

The video is embedded below, followed by a transcript of the relevant section.



Hi everybody, I'm Joseph Goodman of Goodman Games. We recently announced our City State of the Invincible Overlord crowdfunding project for 5E and DCC RPG.

In the video you're about to see, some of our product development team is going to tell you about what makes the City State so amazing and why we're bringing it back to 5E and DCC audiences nearly 50 years after it was first released. It really is an amazing setting.

But we could have rolled this project out with a lot more clarity. Now, to be clear, Goodman Games absolutely opposes any sort of bigotry, racism, anti-semitism, homophobia, transphobia. We don't want to support it. We don't want to be associated with it.

Our well-intentioned effort to launch this project in a way that refunds backers of a former failed Kickstarter from another publisher kind of backfired in the way we announced it. Rest assured, the funds from this crowdfunding will actually fund refunds to backers of the original City State crowdfunding for the Pathfinder edition from 2014.

Unfortunately, our efforts have been—you know, I didn’t clarify them perfectly when we rolled it out—and they've been mischaracterized by some folks since then. But please rest assured, we stand for inclusivity and diversity.

You can read a lot more detail in the post that's linked below, and there's another video linked below where we talk about this in even more detail. But for now, we hope you will sit back and enjoy as some of the product development team tells you about really what makes the City State of the Invincible Overlord so amazing, and why you might want to check it out when it comes to crowdfunding soon.

Thanks, and I'll turn it over to them now.

The statement refers to a post about this that is supposed to be linked below, but at the time of writing no post is linked below the video, so it's not clear if that refers to a new post or one of Goodman Games' previous statements on the issue.

I reached out to Joseph Goodman last week to offer a non-confrontational (although direct and candid) interview in which he could answer some ongoing questions and talk on his reasoning behind the decision; I have not yet received a response to the offer--I did, however, indicate that I was just leaving for UK Games Expo, and wouldn't be back until this week.

*Normally I would have covered this in a more timely fashion, but I was away at UK Games Expo from Thursday through to Monday.
 

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The only thing I can think of is a silence clause. He's not saying that his hand is forced because he's not allowed.

Sorry, but that is still completely nonsensical to me.

Any such clause has pretty limited enforceability. The realistic worst case is that saying certain things would break the contract.

If such a contract/clause existed before Bledsaw outed himself as a Nazi, then the contract was publicly broken in 2020. If such a contract was made after 2020, then pretty much everything both Goodman and Bledsaw have stated publicly is a lie. And you have to believe that either Goodman is the biggest idiot in the industry, or entered the contract while Bledsaw sat across from him and forced him to sign or he would refuse to hand over the antidote to the poison Goodman just drank. Hahaha! You fools! Don't you know this is all part of the plan to.. uh... hmm. What was that master plan again?
 
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Or Occams Razor - Goodman is a sell-out. This product is tied hand-in-hand with the inaugural GMG Day - and elicited such a negative response - whilst being so far in development they apparently have to recoup costs to pay writers/artists/developers. It is apparently much further along that previous campaigns with already completed/previously published assets (e.g. Purple Planet), so...
 
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Sorry, but that is still completely nonsensical to me.

Any such clause has pretty limited enforceability. The realistic worst case is that saying certain things would break the contract.
Okay. I would think that the worst case would be breaking the contract would trigger a fee payable directly to the Bledsaws for lost sales. But, I'm not a lawyer. I'm just trying to make sense of it.

Or Occams Razor - Goodman is a sell-out.
Maybe. Doesn't feel right to me, but maybe he is.
 



Or Occams Razor - Goodman is a sell-out. This product is tied hand-in-hand with the inaugural GMG Day - and elicited such a negative response - whilst being so far in development they apparently have to recoup costs to pay writers/artists/developers. It is apparently much further along that previous campaigns with already completed/previously published assets (e.g. Purple Planet), so...

Or Hanlon's Razor...

Not entirely understanding the contract being signed before signing it is a possibility.

Upthread, someone had mentioned that Bledsaw making the statements that he made in public would break the contract. I'm not a lawyer, but I do not believe there exist a law which would nullify a contract based upon bigoted behavior.

Unless Bledsaw agreed that bad behavior (which would need to be defined by the contract) was a condition upon which the contract could be nullified, I do not believe that his behavior alone is enough to nullify the other party's obligation to the contract.
 

Sorry, but that is still completely nonsensical to me.

NDAs and non-disparagement clauses are not exactly rare these days.

But such may not be necessary. If there's a contract that compels him to make an attempt to publish, then saying, "I'm sorry folks, but I'm required by contract to try..." is arguably an attempt to tank the product, which might itself be actionable under the contract.

Even if he isn't contractually compelled, talking about your business arrangements in public is frowned upon, and makes you look untrustworthy for future partners.
 
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So this contract has a disparagement clause that would prevent saying it was signed before 2020 or that they're obligated to fulfill the terms because that would damage sales, but at the same time it allows Goodman to repeatedly take to video to talk about how reprehensible the Bledshaws are including saying in 2020 that they're so terrible he'll never do business with them again? And that's ok under the disparagement clause?

That's a little rough to buy into.
 

So this contract has a disparagement clause that would prevent saying it was signed before 2020 or that they're obligated to fulfill the terms because that would damage sales, but at the same time it allows Goodman to repeatedly take to video to talk about how reprehensible the Bledshaws are including saying in 2020 that they're so terrible he'll never do business with them again? And that's ok under the disparagement clause?

That's a little rough to buy into.
Exactly. It's apparently binding for Goodman but not Bledsaw. If it's binding for both, then Bledsaw's already violated the contract, which would give Goodman a legal out...and yet he's not taken it. No matter how many times this gets spun around or argued about, Goodman clearly wants to create this product regardless of the consequences.

The eternal crux of the matter, for me, is that Bledsaw's Holocaust denial and bigotry were not sufficiently reprehensible to prevent Goodman from willingly entering into this contract. If Goodman entered into this contract prior to Bledsaw's 2020 rant, then the contract that is so utterly binding Goodman's hands now would have been in force back then. If there's a "no disparagement" clause then it's easy to assume there's something similar with a "protect my reputation" clause. So again, Goodman could have gotten out of the contract if he wanted to. So again, we're back to Goodman is in this position because he wants to be.
 

Exactly. It's apparently binding for Goodman but not Bledsaw. If it's binding for both, then Bledsaw's already violated the contract, which would give Goodman a legal out...and yet he's not taken it.
It's not that clear cut, or maybe better said, it's not like we would know whether or not Goodman is/would pursue such an "out". The wheels of justice turn slow, and there's always the chance that Goodman is already pursuing legal recourse on some level over this contract, but because such is not decided and already before the courts, the best option might be to proceed as-is.

Just because one side breaks a contract doesn't mean the other side can immediately and irrevocably without fear or retaliation do the same.

Contracts and contract law are beasts, and untangling even the simplest ones costs money and time. Two things that run counter to publishing TTRPGs since they don't make a lot of money even though they require a substantial amount of time.
 

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