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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Wincenworks" data-source="post: 9108517" data-attributes="member: 7038835">Okay, so if anyone was really emotionally invested in Michael K Hovermale having a redemption arc... I regret to inform you that the odds of that have dropped... dramatically.[ATTACH=full]293405[/ATTACH]For those not aware, Mark Kern, aka Grummz, is a former Blizzard employee who more or less embodies the toxic environment that has been brought up in multiple lawsuits.  He left Blizzard at the height of the late 2000s video game boom (so about thirteen years ago... yet it still his sole positive employment claim) - when investors were seeing how Blizzard was making obscene money by limiting their development costs and maximizing their audience... and he basically did the opposite of that. He <a href="https://www.techinasia.com/firefall-mark-kern-sacked-the9-story" target="_blank">more or less single-handedly ended an investor funded company</a> through extravagant stunt purchases (most famously a tricked out gamer bus).After that, he was infamous for jumping on board with the Gamergate movement and jumping into all their reactionary nonsense, he claimed he was going to make a new social network... but it turned out to be just like a guest book type thing where you could only post to the public feed... then he claimed it was a non-profit for the benefit of gamers and more legit than Crash Override despite it being struck off the register at the time, etc.  Basically he was bad enough there was not just a thread, but <a href="https://twitter.com/MYSADKERN" target="_blank">a whole Twitter account</a> dedicated to documenting his antics.In 2016 <a href="https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/ember-massive-planetary-wargame#/" target="_blank">he started an IndieGoGo promising he would make a MMO about Mecha vs Kaiju</a> - that would be spiritual successor to the game he was supposed to make at the company he bankrupted by purchasing a bus, and made so little progress with that over the next five years that people were asking... <a href="https://massivelyop.com/2021/03/22/whatever-happened-to-mark-kerns-crowdfunded-firefall-successor-em8er/" target="_blank">what even happened to it</a>?  The answer to that  is... it basically pivoted into selling overpriced fap material:[ATTACH=full]293407[/ATTACH][ATTACH=full]293408[/ATTACH]The whole project has operated very much like a crypto-scam, starting with irrational prices for pre-orders with no clear delivery date (or even why you would want the project) to becoming insular to protect True Believers from FUD (Fear, Uncertainty & Doubt).  He used to post to Twitter, upload to YouTube and stream on Twitch, but now it's all pretty much done entirely in his Discord... they have a forum but it's dominated entirely by his volunteers who and hence, almost never has any thing worth reading about posted there.Which y'know... I would think would be disappointing if I paid $150 USD[ATTACH=full]293409[/ATTACH]What I'm saying is, he is very much the Justin LaNasa of video games.</blockquote>

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