I kinda sorta have been following the twitter drama for the past couple of hours and it’s pretty wild.
It’s since been deleted (but I believe it’s the tweet Alexandria originally replied to in this screenshot iirc), but Cooper apparently RT’d a current ND employee’s
tweet about being hospitalized after passing out at work, adding a blurb about crunch culture as a way to further the (admittedly much needed) conversation about unhealthy and damaging work practices. But it turns out the ND employee he RT’d fainted for
entirely different, women’s health related reasons. Alexandria called him out on it, which is probably what prompted the deletion.
He also, reasonably, spoke to incensed gamers about not having to feel oblige to boycott games as their success, after all, pay for employee bonuses (I’ve always wondered about this!).
Just not contractors, he added, along with a photo of a cardboard box full of ND and gaming memorabilia that people are supposed to assume is taken on a contractor’s last day at ND.
He got called out on it by a current ND dev, who claimed that the photo is taken from a former colleague’s private Facebook post in which the individual expressed how much they loved their time at ND. Said ND dev was subsequently told to simmer down by Cooper as he apparently had permission to use the photo.
Now this shouldn’t diminish what Jason’s article and Cooper’s earlier tweets brought to light: which is the unhealthy and damaging work practices employed by ND management that has led to the loss of senior staff and even a reported hospitalization. I commend Jason and Cooper for breaking the dam, so to speak, and airing the dirty laundry, because god knows crunch culture shouldn’t ever be the norm in ANY industry. Putting the spotlight on ND should hopefully get the issue some traction seeing as they’re one of the most prestigious first party studios out there. We can only hope that they’ll eventually feel the pressure to change their work practices. The exposé is an eye-opening insight into their work structure and has certainly changed my perception of ND as a management.
At the same time, I wish Cooper would’ve just let his earlier tweets do the talking. He shouldn’t have posted/RT’d out of context images from former colleagues that were CLEARLY meant to be deliberately misconstrued by those following his twitter thread just to further prove a point about ND’s work culture. It reflects poorly on him.
And in light of Alexandria’s response to Cooper’s campaign, now we know why Druckmann sent out those morale boosting tweets! While it doesn’t excuse his silence on his studio’s mismanagement, it does give his tweets some context in light of the blowout. Many in the team - who we’ve come to learn must be made up of predominantly junior devs - must have felt slighted by Cooper’s tweets, and, well, Druckmann had to say something.
www.resetera.com
