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<blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 9288111" data-attributes="member: 18"><p>To be honest, I kind of do as well, but in my view it's outright negligent for a company to work with the Pinkertons at all without carefully managing what they actually use them for. WotC has used them before, basically for intimidating low-level employees (i.e. factory workers etc.), which is the main reason you hire them - to put the fear of god into your actual honest working joes (thanks capitalism!). You usually do this if you're a B2B corporation who thinks it has a theft issue (and maybe would like to prevent any unions from appearing) or when the Pinkertons are only ever going to interact with your workforce and nothing else.</p><p></p><p>Here I suspect the chain of events was "WotC hires/has on retainer Pinkertons to investigate thefts from their MtG plants". Thus the Pinkertons investigated this, but both WotC and them should have gone "Uh-oh, time for a rethink" when the investigation involved a "civilian" as it were, especially as it was apparently realized it was not any kind of criminal act on his part before they approached him.</p><p></p><p>I think your cynicism is preventing you from seeing how genuinely and honestly appalled people are, and also you're seemingly only looking at what did happen, not what could have happened. The agents in question appear to have been armed, and in the only account we have (because, again, WotC hasn't given any account of their own, only disavowed any threats/intimidation as not ordered by them and generically and entirely meaninglessly said they "refute" the account of events), they were wandering around on to various people's properties, lying to those people that they had an "appointment" with this guy (which I 100% believe, as it is 100% in line with the behaviour your typical investigator-type rentacop, like a PI without the subtlety). I couldn't easily find out what state this was, but if it was a stand your ground state, we're honestly lucky there wasn't some kind of shoot-out (more likely between these guys and a neighbour than the man himself). Just stupid behaviour.</p><p></p><p>I'm not so much worried for some dodgy YouTuber (though as a long-married guy the idea of Hired Goons so much as looking at my wife, let alone talking to her and making claims does fill me with a kind of righteous fury whether I like it or not), but what does say to me is "WotC are incompetent" and "WotC are getting into so much PR trouble because they have an executive culture which doesn't give a sod about PR and/or one of impunity for stupid decisions" - and like guess which other company has that? Yeah it's Microsoft, the one I think an actual majority of WotC senior execs at this point used to work at. Mike Mearls much earlier screw-up was also representative of a company where leadership feels it has impunity rather than responsibility.</p><p></p><p>So I expect more screw-ups on this basis, not fewer, especially when WotC is trying to be dismissive and flippant about this stuff rather than owning it. They aren't always - they were dismissive and flippant about the OGL 2.0 exactly until the problem got so bad they had to do a full 180 and becoming grovelling and glad-handed (to the point of CCBY-ing the SRD, which no-one expected!). The D&D team has also not been dismissive or flippant about racism stuff in their books - they've largely sensibly stayed silent until they worked out what was going on and then were appropriately apologetic.</p><p></p><p>Sure.</p><p></p><p>But if your next step is "multiple hired goons with guns" rather than "a single polite corporate guy with a letter he can drop if you're not there", you missed a step - maybe quite a few steps - you'd normally also send a process server with a legal threat before "armed hired goons". I suspect this was probably the goons exceeding their authority, but that's still 100% on WotC for hiring them and failing to monitor them appropriately.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Ruin Explorer, post: 9288111, member: 18"] To be honest, I kind of do as well, but in my view it's outright negligent for a company to work with the Pinkertons at all without carefully managing what they actually use them for. WotC has used them before, basically for intimidating low-level employees (i.e. factory workers etc.), which is the main reason you hire them - to put the fear of god into your actual honest working joes (thanks capitalism!). You usually do this if you're a B2B corporation who thinks it has a theft issue (and maybe would like to prevent any unions from appearing) or when the Pinkertons are only ever going to interact with your workforce and nothing else. Here I suspect the chain of events was "WotC hires/has on retainer Pinkertons to investigate thefts from their MtG plants". Thus the Pinkertons investigated this, but both WotC and them should have gone "Uh-oh, time for a rethink" when the investigation involved a "civilian" as it were, especially as it was apparently realized it was not any kind of criminal act on his part before they approached him. I think your cynicism is preventing you from seeing how genuinely and honestly appalled people are, and also you're seemingly only looking at what did happen, not what could have happened. The agents in question appear to have been armed, and in the only account we have (because, again, WotC hasn't given any account of their own, only disavowed any threats/intimidation as not ordered by them and generically and entirely meaninglessly said they "refute" the account of events), they were wandering around on to various people's properties, lying to those people that they had an "appointment" with this guy (which I 100% believe, as it is 100% in line with the behaviour your typical investigator-type rentacop, like a PI without the subtlety). I couldn't easily find out what state this was, but if it was a stand your ground state, we're honestly lucky there wasn't some kind of shoot-out (more likely between these guys and a neighbour than the man himself). Just stupid behaviour. I'm not so much worried for some dodgy YouTuber (though as a long-married guy the idea of Hired Goons so much as looking at my wife, let alone talking to her and making claims does fill me with a kind of righteous fury whether I like it or not), but what does say to me is "WotC are incompetent" and "WotC are getting into so much PR trouble because they have an executive culture which doesn't give a sod about PR and/or one of impunity for stupid decisions" - and like guess which other company has that? Yeah it's Microsoft, the one I think an actual majority of WotC senior execs at this point used to work at. Mike Mearls much earlier screw-up was also representative of a company where leadership feels it has impunity rather than responsibility. So I expect more screw-ups on this basis, not fewer, especially when WotC is trying to be dismissive and flippant about this stuff rather than owning it. They aren't always - they were dismissive and flippant about the OGL 2.0 exactly until the problem got so bad they had to do a full 180 and becoming grovelling and glad-handed (to the point of CCBY-ing the SRD, which no-one expected!). The D&D team has also not been dismissive or flippant about racism stuff in their books - they've largely sensibly stayed silent until they worked out what was going on and then were appropriately apologetic. Sure. But if your next step is "multiple hired goons with guns" rather than "a single polite corporate guy with a letter he can drop if you're not there", you missed a step - maybe quite a few steps - you'd normally also send a process server with a legal threat before "armed hired goons". I suspect this was probably the goons exceeding their authority, but that's still 100% on WotC for hiring them and failing to monitor them appropriately. [/QUOTE]
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