So, if you follow gaming industry news at all, the last forty-eight hours have been pretty interesting for the Escapist, home to Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw's Zero Punctuation series and Bob Chipman / The Game Overthinker's Other Shows, have essentially been at social network war with James Portnow and Daniel Floyd of Extra Credits, contributing partners to their site for the past year, over unpaid wages for content production. As the Escapist is one of the sites I've followed for a while now, and it's always second or third on my most visited sites (switching between it and Hulu, with this site sitting pretty at first), and I've followed Floyd and Portnow's series since it's inception (...well...when it was first featured here on ScrewAttack), I'm not really sure what to really say about the situation...so, I thought about other situations similar to this.
The parallel I've seen a lot of people draw is to that of Jeff Gerstmann, formerly of GameSpot who went on to found Giant Bomb after being fired, reportedly due to pressure from Eidos after a negative review of Kane and Lynch. This is a good one, as it again had to do with money, though this was an external force imposing it's will on the company. While the financial recession and the medical and personal issues that occurred leading up to the Extra Credits team requesting their funds prompted it, it was still the two parties directly at odds.
So...what others have been like that? Well, there's of course plenty similar to the GameSpot/Gerstmann debacle, but this Escapist/Extra Credits one...well, there has been only one that I can think of right off hand. Co-founder Tom leaving ScrewAttack and what's been done since.
Now, I can only explain the situation as I recall, and I welcome any correction from ScrewAttack or the older g1's if I get this wrong, but in 2008, the business partnership fell apart between Tom and Craig. The reasons for this are still rather murky, though as I understand it, Tom either wanted more money or more power within the company, something Craig was unable and/or unwilling to give at the time due to the current situations for both the company and their working relationship at the time.
In this situation, I still believe Craig took the higher road, trying to explain why things occurred the way they did to their fan base, both on Gametrailers and we, the g1's, the metaphorical "Timmy, your mother and I are getting divorced and here's why" as it were. Having taken the time to go back and again watch the video made to the community on "The Healing Touch", I still feel Tom has not made clear his motives, and as such, I genuinely feel that ScrewAttack and Craig were the wronged parties of the situation.
Having seen more recent examples of cast and crew leaving the site due to financial reasons (mostly, better financial opportunities elsewhere) and what Craig's done to maintain the staff, going so far as to run ads of corporate sponsors as part of Hard News and other shows of the site, I believe that Craig did try to do everything in his power to ensure that the site didn't have to suffer that loss in 2008, something, sadly, I do not think Alexander Macris, CEO of The Escapist, even tried to do. For him, it's sadly been a pattern of behavior stretching back over the past few years, and it has been forcing contributors to leave the site to try again at focusing on putting out great content.
For doing such though, I want to commend Craig for always trying to do what's best for the company and the crew, seemingly regardless of his own desires, something other industry running bodies, as well as those among other industries sadly, seem to be lacking lately.
If you're interested in learning more about the situation over at The Escapist, a member of their forums has done a great job of maintaining a constant source from all sides. Check it out.
As always, please share any thoughts in the comments, especially if I have any facts wrong at this point. Thanks.
-Sara
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