Why did Chris end up reporting directly to Feargus? Was there a promotion or a restructuring? Chris, do you think you would still be at Obsidian if you hadn't been assigned directly subordinate to him?
The refusal to pay back of employees happened before reporting directly to Feargus, and the other revelation on what had happened at Interplay didn't happen b/c of the direct report, so I wouldn't have stayed in the long-term, no.
Both the refusal to pay back employees and the Interplay revelation showcased Feargus's fundamental problems with ethics and trying to ascertain what was actually true in what Feargus told to us on a daily basis. He might not even be malicious or intentionally withholding info, you just wouldn't know if it was the truth - even documenting things via email could prove useless if he changed his mind and didn't tell you, but a paper trail was a start, especially if seen by someone outside the conversation (see below).
Reporting to him definitely sped the departure up, however, as it added to the problems already in place and reinforced them.
I don't think anyone could tell you the clear owner and hierarchy responsibilities at Obsidian, even the owners themselves beyond the fact Feargus is CEO/CFO. I didn't have much clarity on my own position, even after asking several times, and even proposing a list of responsibilities. This may have changed since I left, but it wasn't the case at the time.
While the owners could perhaps vote against something happening, or vote for something happening, this wasn't done very often in practice (owner meetings weren't run as official meetings, and as mentioned before, Parker and Darren would usually agree with Feargus, so speaking up was largely useless and just got others angry at you for challenging a position).
Feargus's resistance to employees being paid back, however, I felt strongly enough about to speak up about, more than once, because I wasn't even given a reason WHY we weren't paying them back beyond "we didn't promise we'd pay them back," which wasn't an acceptable answer. This information is documented.
In fact, all of these topics were in emails at Obsidian, so it's on record (the employee resistance to payback was a thread all the owners were a part of, and so was the 'hiring-the-children' thread, and Feargus's wife on the payroll, my revelation about my mother's condition, and more). It's documented there, and I doubt Obsidian would delete those (as that makes a bad situation worse). Some of those issues continued after the departure as well (the 401K mess-ups, the mess-up with expenses with HR, the refusal to honor existing contracts, etc.).
