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| Leaked image from World of Darkness |
CCP DICK RATING *****
We all knew it was coming right? After 8 years of development and only a few very vague presentations, World of Darkness (WOD) was cancelled today and most of the employees laid off.
"The decision to end the World of Darkness MMO project is one of the hardest I've ever had to make," CCP CEO Hilmar Veigar Petursson said in a prepared statement.
But that wasn't the story 3 days earlier where rumours began to spread on Reddit about mass lay-offs at CCPs Atlanta office (home of WOD). Ex CCP staff member CCP Dropbear posted Storm on the horizon: WoD appears to be cancelled.
"What details I've picked up from informal conversations:
- ATL EVE Online GMs will remain.
- A handful of other administrative staff will remain: likely to be HR, Office Managers, Legal, and so on.
- The rest of the staff, which constitutes the overwhelming majority of people in CCP working on WoD, is seemingly on the verge of being let go."
An unknown person started the rumours in the office sometime late Thursday or early Friday. No specifics were given out and no one knew exactly what was happening, who would be staying or who would be going. The only thing most people seemed sure of was it was big. Atlanta management apparently refused to comment. This must have been a very stressful time for the employees at Atlanta.
Official word did come out of CCP shortly after the reddit post began to gain traction
"This is nothing more than a rumor with no basis of fact. Hope that's enough of a confirmation for you guys. :)" CCP Falcon
When it became clear that the employees had been fired, CCP Eterne tried to defend Falcons lies
"There is a difference between a deliberate deception and one of ignorance. It was a mistake of wording, but there was no malice or intent to mislead." (Source)
Unfortunately Falcon wasn't content with lying to Reddit and to the Atlanta employees. Falcon posted on the official forums admitting he knew he was lying, but decided it was better to lie than to say nothing. In the process he also showed that CCP Eterne isn't above coming to the community and telling us an outright lie.
"There is a difference between a deliberate deception and one of ignorance. It was a mistake of wording, but there was no malice or intent to mislead." (Source)
Unfortunately Falcon wasn't content with lying to Reddit and to the Atlanta employees. Falcon posted on the official forums admitting he knew he was lying, but decided it was better to lie than to say nothing. In the process he also showed that CCP Eterne isn't above coming to the community and telling us an outright lie.
"Yeah, I'm already being called out on reddit over it. Such is life.
Feel free to call me out on this, but out of respect for those who have been let go in Atlanta, and their families, I wasn't prepared to let rumors build over the weekend before we could speak to people, and whoever was posting information was wholly irresponsible and completely wrong in doing so.
There's a time, a place, and a proper procedure for doing stuff like this." (Source)
So after the employees found out they were to be laid off, CCP officially come out and reassure them that they are not being laid off. Then on Monday morning sacks them all. I am pretty sure that counts as a dick move by CCP.
But how did it feel to be an employee going through this?
"As the spouse of an employee who was let go today due to this, I was wholly pissed off that we were all but certain this was happening Friday night and then to come here and read your denial. It did little to stop the rumors building among outsiders - it did nothing to stop the rumors among the employees and their families, since the writing was pretty clearly on the wall - and only added uncertainty and false hope into our already pretty terrible weekends. The leak sucked for you guys, but this was not the way to damage control. It was indeed cruel to those of us affected. I hope that CCP learns a few things about how to handle such events better in the future. I appreciate that it was a hard situation with the leak (though from what little I know and won't be sharing, it sounds like the dissemination of information in Atlanta was poorly thought out and executed), but this denial only served to invalidate everything we were going through this weekend." (Source)
While Falcons actions broke pretty much every rule in the 'how to fire an employee' hand book, he at least was trying in his own messed up way to help.
The full WOD leaked gallery can be found HERE
