It seems we’ve missed the mark on Mike O’Brien.
For that, we apologize. 😔
Mike is held in high regard by both ANet employees and fans.
The layoffs originate from NCSoft West CEO Yoon Song-Yee and NCsoft CEO Kim Taek-Jin.— Game Workers Unite ✊🏿✊🏽✊🏾 GDC (@GameWorkers) February 26, 2019
This international grassroots organization of game workers that are attempting to organize unions in order to improve the game industry, lost a ton of credibility by failing to properly research the origination of the restructuring and subsequent layoffs that happened at ArenaNet earlier this week, by initially calling for the firing of ArenaNet boss, Mike O’Brien. The organization previously started a campaign and supported calls for the resignation of Activision Blizzard CEO Robert Kotick (a move which I do agree with since his is a case of decision making that benefits only a few at the top of the company).
NCSoft is a publicly traded corporation in South Korea and the company covered the impending changes that would be facing the company and all of its worldwide subsidiaries in their Q4 2018 earnings call a few weeks ago (which was where the earlier rumors stemmed from that resulted in ArenaNet leadership meeting with personnel last week). What was not known then were the actual details. This is why it didn’t take much reading between the lines to know the decisions was being driven by parent NCSoft in South Korea though and not one being made directly by ArenaNet head, Mike O’Brien.
The retraction happened when others began messaging/replying over Twitter to the organization about this over sight (the direction coming from NCSoft and NCSoft West) for failing to perform proper due diligence of basic fact checking on the matter. While they apologized, this is an organization attempting to gain credibility and therefore, need to be held to a higher standard when it comes to public statements they make.
