I "bought it"? Dumb ass, I didn't just spin up an account last week. I've been active here for years. I know exactly what the Codex is. Yes, there are some people using the Codex as an excuse to not talk about Avellone's accusations. But all you have to do is read this thread to understand that it's entirely accurate to say that the forum in which his accusations are being documented is a genuine problem in the real world.
I'd dearly love to see an actual journalist (and there are one or two serious game journalists) interview Chris and press Feargus for his side of the story. Sadly, we'll likely never see that because the venue has poisoned the message.
Gaming journalism has a symbiotic relationship with publishers and developers (notice how Avellone said Obsidian coffers are empty come review time), they won't bite the hand that feeds them over a disgruntled ex-employee (or co-owner in this case) testimony. That it originated on the Codex is largely irrelevant in the grand scheme of things, it just a handy excuse for people to dismiss it but they would have done so anyway.
Hey guys, so we've been following this on TechRaptor and talked with Chris as the above link showed. We've tried to get to Obsidian - in fact before we posted the first story but they have not responded to us. We have been working at getting what we can but there's nothing from Obsidian that we can share at this time, though some of that may be because we're smaller there.
Regarding the empty coffers come review time comment I think you're reading a bit too much there. Review time is also just before a game is releasing meaning that you've been pressing, you're possibly bringing in people to do QA fix especially given Obsidian has tried to focus on that more or have to send it to external, depending on contract may need to deal with consoles and the fees there as well as advertising depending on how that is split in spend - and no that generally isn't sending to publishers. You may see some direct buys but even there a lot is through networks and detecting interest of people or through parent companies that do business and own several sites. Essentially you're coming up on the end, or a major transformation point on a contract and during this period your expenses are higher (you also may be having to travel more, for example, to do pitches or line up your next job).
I'm a bit confused by this... 'review' time in America is generally the annual performance review wherein employees are hoping for some sort of a raise, promotion, or guidance, and I assumed that's what
Chris Avellone was referring to. That's not tied to game development schedules and is very different than 'pre-launch game review and regression' which is what you appear to be describing.
I don't work in the gaming industry though, so maybe they do things differently, and that's what MCA meant. Would love a clarification from him, if so!
Edit: Also, if people would just ignore the off-topic posts, they'd likely go away. Most of this shit is done for attention, after all.