HR 101: even if you're going to fire somebody, you shouldn't burn bridges. Unless your ex-employee went postal or something like that, there's always a chance you'll want them back later.
Hah. Nah, first they have to deal with the negative publicity one gets for firing someone in a seemingly ethical manner. Because that person is going to speak up. Whether he's "right" or not (I'll let the court can decide).
All businesses do have feuds in management or whatever. But the majority of business management knows how to avoid any antagonistic temptations, settle reasonably, with the end result being not a
peep about what happened.
Also, this is not
really about MCA. This is about what a company did and the fact that they were
willing to do so to another human being. That's a personality trait, and as such, behavior like that is universal. Not just to one person. Anyone who thinks MCA is the
only one being hurt is short-sighted. He's the only one because he's the first. And/or he wasn't the only one treated this way, but the others are not the "speaking out" type.
This action in fact has put every Obsidian employee's job security at risk. Which means said employees work in fear they'll get treated the same. It would not be surprising at all if any employees left voluntarily. Especially the developers, who either good friends with MCA and/or respect him given that they know their industry's history well. It's true that lightning never strikes the same place twice. Because every employee has their own desk or office.
Yet again, this is both not ethical and not business-smart. It's almost like being seen as ethical improves your image, attracting talent, advertisement opportunities, getting not just customers but
loyal customers (<- Important. Marketing 101)...
It's almost like ensuring an ethical public image is a business necessity (big corp/Wall Street excluded). Note I said to ensure an ethical public image, not to actually be ethical
But in a small company, you probably actually need to be ethical to maintaining your public image. Because the smaller the company, the louder is each individual employee. And I believe it is smarter for your employees to praise you loudly rather than denigrate you loudly.
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Heh, maybe it's pointless for us normies to get upset about it, because in the big picture Obsidian is digging its own grave.
Obsidian: 15 games made, 4 games canceled. (Futurebright, Dwarves - as in Disney's Snow White, Aliens: Crucible - where Sega management does get 1/2 the blame, and Stormlands - which eventually turned into Tyranny... "eventually" being the key word because Stormlands is rumored to have been started as a Xbone game and is known to be intended as an open world over-the-shoulder game.
Sega saved Obsidian from the layoff ramifications of the cancellation of Dwarves, while MCA and Parker still had to end up salvaging Alpha Protocol from cancellation. In fact, Obsidian gave the Alpha Protocol IP to Sega as part of the contract that saved Obsidian's ass.
Stormlands may have been the starting idea for Tyranny, but the cancellation of Stormlands itself laid off 20-30 employees.
They went Kickstarter for PoE because of a financial crisis, not because they actually cared about crowdfunding.
Edit: Oh, and they gave up on Armored Warfare halfway, forcing their publisher's hand (Paradox) to finish the rest. I believe it was hinted that Paradox isn't quite happy with Obsidian about that.
