streamofthesky posted...
It's really weird to see the "support VA workers' rights!" brigade ask, "why not just have the corporation last-second cancel some of its workers' weekends to deal some stupid twitter s*** storm?"
It'd be one tweet, dude. Literally anyone with access to the corporate account could handle it without getting out of bed and probably claim an hour's overtime for that 30 seconds of work. Heck, an executive could handle that, so it doesn't even have to be some bottom-rung employee having that dumped on them.
I can also pretty much guarantee that, whether they published anything or not, the PR manager was monitoring the situation and communicating with the higher-ups all weekend. That's the nature of PR management: PR situations that need to be handled aren't limited to 9-5 M-F, so sometimes the position is going to require after-hours and weekend work. That's not a bad thing (provided the expectations of the job are made clear from the outset, they're compensated appropriately, and that expectation isn't abused), it's just the nature of the job. I can also pretty much guarantee that same PR person would be working over 1-2 extra weekends even if she released her statement on a Monday, since a situation like this warrants longer-term monitoring to watch how the situation evolves and respond as appropriate. There's also a good chance they're putting in some overtime already because it was two weeks before one of the studio's highest-profile game launches.
That's not to say it
couldn't
end up being some minimum-wage temp being asked to go into the office to stare at Twitter all weekend, but it very much doesn't have to be, such that assuming that's what I'm suggesting is just plain silly.
streamofthesky posted...
Maybe because it could wait till Monday?
So there was no actual benefit to making the claim on a Friday afternoon, despite you repeatedly bringing it up as though it's a deliberate part of a well-planned slander campaign?
streamofthesky posted...
Maybe because they wanted to take some time and put together their official response, an approach the losers on twitter could learn from.
The official response is "We offered her $15k for the actual job. $4k was for a cameo appearance after she turned down the full job. Proof is available if any journalists want to corroborate this claim." That doesn't take time to put together. What does take time is consulting their lawyers to figure out what they can legally say without violating their end of the NDA or straying into the territory of defaming Taylor, which has nothing to do with taking the time to avoid jumping to conclusions and everything to do with the fact that they're in a position where saying the wrong thing can get them sued.
streamofthesky posted...
Kamiya said flat out it was lies, and look how that worked out for him.
He said the rough equivalent of "It's all lies and if anyone questions me I'll ban them immediately!" That's not exactly a good PR response that's going to do anything to convince anyone that Platinum's in the right. He acted guilty, so people presumed guilt.
As I've said many times throughout this: Game companies categorically do not deserve the benefit of the doubt in questions of employee welfare. There are too many blatant abuses that showcase some of the worst aspects of free market capitalism to presume innocence, such that it can very safely be assumed that any apparent new examples of those abuses are probably legitimate. If they subsequently prove the claims are not legitimate (and actually prove that, none of this "Activision Blizzard has conducted a thorough investigation of Activision Blizzard and determined that Activision Blizzard did nothing wrong" nonsense), then you can let them off the hook, but in terms of public opinion, corporations should be kept on the defensive whenever allegations like this come up. Trust is earned, and the games industry has done the exact opposite of earning that trust.
Now, continuing to try to come up with new ways to criticize the company to avoid changing one's mind after information comes out to prove that the claims against them aren't legitimate? That is indeed stupid. But that's entirely separate from the decision to attack the company as soon as it appeared they had done wrong. Your insistence on conflating them is mistaken.