Steve Alexander
Steve Alexander was a lifelong gamer until #GamerGate ripped the veil from his innocent (albeit bloodshot) eyes. Unlike most of his generation, he does not believe in Facebook, Instagram or Snapchat and can be reached at [email protected] You can follow him on Twitter.
On his blog Little Tiny Frogs, Stardock CEO and frequent anti-gamergate target Brad Wardell recently wrote a comment-by-comment response to GamerGhazi’s frequent accusations toward him. Mr. Wardell has been fighting for his good name for some time now: a few years ago, a former Stardock employee hit him with a sexual harassment lawsuit that was subsequently dismissed. Despite this, social justice warrior “journalists” such as Ben Kuchera penned stories against Wardell, claiming that the evidence against him was “damning.” Rather than sit by and take their abuse, Mr. Wardell is now fighting back.
A History Of Misreported Deeds
Having a sexual harassment lawsuit levied against is bad enough, but when the entire press has already tried and convicted you, it’s ten times worse. That was the case in September of 2012, when Ben “Tetris is Commie Propaganda” Kuchera, then-editor of The Penny Arcade Report, published a story titled “Stardock CEO Brad Wardell Sued for Sexual Harassment, with Some Pretty Damning Evidence” (the title was later changed to “with Some Heavy Allegations”). In the story, Kuchera published a number of claims made by the plaintiff in graphic detail, without including anything from Mr. Wardell’s counter-suit or even contacting him to get his side of the story.
The lawsuit was later dismissed with prejudice in September of 2013, and the plaintiff even issued a letter of apology for bringing the lawsuit. But you can imagine that Mr. Wardell was understandably wary of the gaming press after this happened, and the narrative that he is a sexual harasser persists to this day among the anti-gamergate crowd.
With such a history, is it any wonder that Mr. Wardell would take a vested interest in rooting out nonsense?
Dissecting The Lies And Nonsense Of Anti-#GamerGate
After Brianna Wu was eaten alive by his followers after meeting Wardell for a coffee (showing just how much loyalty exists among social justice warriors), Mr. Wardell took to his personal blog to address the comments on Brianna’s post on GamerGhazi. Hilarity did indeed ensue.
He begins by listing the offending event itself:
To recap: Brianna Wu asked me to have coffee with her at GDC. Bri is very active in the “anti-gamer gate” movement who runs an indie game studio. She and I have clashed in the past and after we got to know each other better we realized that her views and my views have a lot of overlap. Our basic difference is that she sees GamerGate as a hate group and I am sympathetic to GamerGate’s stated goal of cleaning up indie gaming journalism.
Anyway, Bri shared on twitter that she and I had a pleasant sit down together and her followers went bonkers leading her to feel obligated to restate that she and I are not in some sort of alliance, etc. After being viciously insulted online, Bri felt obligated to make a Reddit post to assuage the irrational fears of her supporters. Now, her liking me or not liking me doesn’t affect whether I found her to be a pleasant individual in person or not. I found her to be quite pleasant and interesting. But then again, I don’t define myself by hating other people.
The fact that the anti-gamergate crowd got so amped up over their meeting when the gamergate crowd didn’t is very telling, isn’t it? I mean, I can’t say I’m enthusiastic about the prospect of making peace with Wu, but I’m also not a CEO in an industry that involves her. Learning to work with people you aren’t crazy about is Business 101. Only the incredibly immature would have a hard time understanding that.
Oh look, one of the commenters didn’t understand that.
“Maybe I don’t really understand what it means to be a CEO, and this is a necessary evil. Maybe being a CEO means consorting with evil.”
Maybe they don’t understand what it’s like to have a job? Maybe they don’t understand what it’s like to be a parent? Or to have responsibilities? They don’t really articulate what they mean. As CEO, I run one of the world’s most progressive studios of our size in terms of equality of treatment for all human beings regardless of race, sex, orientation.
They also bring up the already debunked sexual harassment claims, because as we’ve already discussed ad nauseum, anti-#GamerGate supporters are somehow allergic to research.
“Just to make it clear – Brad Wardell has sexually harasser his emplyees. He has confessed in engaging in sexual harassment, he just refuses to call it that.”
This is interesting circular logic. I have both confessed to sexual harassment AND refused to call it that. Well,
let’s make sure we understand what that is:Unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature that tends to create a hostile or offensive work environment. (source)
Bear in mind, I’ve not even been accused of doing the above. I was once sued for sexual harassment (that was the allegation) but none of the allegations actually involved anything that involved harassment or sexual.
My Face Will Soon Have A Permanent Palm Print
At least things have been looking up for Mr. Wardell. Due to Milo Yiannopoulos’ coverage of the terrible and under-researched media coverage of Wardell’s lawsuit, the Stardock CEO has received multiple apologies from gaming blogs. Additionally, his new Early Access game Offworld Trading Company is getting great user reviews on Steam. And most of all, Mr. Wardell gets to live a life where, as CEO of a company, he gets to be successful and piss off social justice warriors by his very existence. He may have had some hardships along the way, but I think he’s living the dream now.
Read More: Leaked Chatlogs From GamerGhazi Reveal Depression, Social Isolation, And Confusion
