Reply With QuoteOriginally Posted by Brad Wardell
Well, I wasn't there, but everything I've read and the responses to my major question on this issue (the IT side of things) has led me to some pretty concrete personal opinions, so I'm content to just watch things unfold at this point. Litigation sucks for everyone though, so I hope it works out for the best for whoever is the most deserving, regardless of who I believe that should be.
Godammit this forum needs a "like" button so bad.
Serious question and I'm not making fun of you or anything - are these responses you want out there something you think helps you going forward? Is it meant to be something that has a positive effect on proceedings, or is it more like something that you think Just Needs To Be Said To Set The Record Straight regardless of whether it helps or harms? Because from the outside this looks like the kind of thing that will be used as course materials for aspiring lawyers and HR peeps on What Not To Do Ever. So I'm curious whether this is seen on your part as some part of an overall strategy for winning or whether it is pure ... uh ... let's, for the sake of argument, call it ... idealism, on your part.
Seriously Brad, step away from your keyboard and let the lawyers take it from here. You are paying them huge sums of money - you may as well let them do their job.
I asked Brad that exact question with regard to her bra size!
http://brokenforum.com/index.php?thr...13#post-236148
And he replied!
So how did you do on the purity test? Did you e-mail your results to anyone interesting?
Yea. This is a game. A strategy game. You don't play chess by rushing with your king, if you do, you lose straight away. Your lawyers are the queens, horse, towers... use them, don't expose your king (you).
Never stop posting, Teiman.
Brad, you can't do this in other software companies or other industries (people who "get mad" and send borderline threatening emails get fired ASAP!). A president who defends himself on a message board with pending legal action? You're running a software company not an autoshop.
Are you really so naive that you think other professionals would sympathesize with "it's ok - we tell Family Guy and Robot Chicken jokes". I'd recommend not bringing that up in front of a jury.
Edit: I don't intend to sound holier than thou... but this just seems like such a shitstorm. It reminds of that Ocean Marketing idiot for anyone who remembers that.
Last edited by videotape; 09-06-2012 at 01:28 PM.
Brad's horse quit when he kept stroking its silky tail and making jokes about checking its teeth.
*high five*
So, I'm guessing that's a "Kotaku lied and never asked me for my side of the story", Brad. Thank you!
I would think as the head of a company, Brad has fiduciary obligations to not harm the company. With each post, he is doing more harm than good. Other peoples lively hood are on the line if this harms Stardock. Seems like the right course of action is to go dark and listen to his legal council.
Truly awesome.
"I'm not some manager or coworker of yours. I own the company. It, and your job there, exist to suit my purposes, not vice versa. The company is not an end unto itself, it is a means to an end which is to further the objectives of its shareholders (in this case, me)."
Its his company. Some people blow money on fast cars or trophy wives. He blows it on trolling the internet.
This is exactly how I'd want to spend my retirement years.
Blowing Money?
google with safesearch off
Yep, missed that bit. Thanks. Man, like watching a horrible train wreck and not being able to look away.
This, 1000 times this. The ethical obligation here to the employees of Stardock is to shut up and let the attorneys handle it. Teiman's post about chess is an apt analogy, the whole reason you have attorneys and public relations people is to handle stuff like this. DIY in this situation will cost you your company, and more importantly, cost innocent people their jobs.
I've refrained from posting about "never buying another Stardock product again" because I realize that it's not just Brad who is ultimately effected by all this. If people boycott Stardock then talented and hard working people who are blame free in all this end up losing their jobs or worse. I can still like Stardock as a company while at the same time finding Brad's behavior abhorrent and reprehensible. I have a sneaking suspicion that no matter if this settles out of court or within it, it's going to cost Brad some serious $$$ and has already cost him a lot of credibility in the industry. That's good enough for me, I don't want to see Stardock go dark over this.
I think you're confusing my explanation of SD's position as some sort of support that it's the only way to read it.
Dave appeared puzzled by why SD would be pointing to her "traditional" departure circumstances as something that supported their rebuttal.
It's starting to rain again; it's—the rain has slacked up a little bit. The back motors of the ship are just holding it just, just enough to keep it from — It burst into flames! Get this, Charlie! Get this, Charlie! It's fire—and it's crashing! It's crashing terrible! Oh, my, get out of the way, please! It's burning and bursting into flames, and the—and it's falling on the mooring-mast and all the folks agree that this is terrible, this is the worst of the worst catastrophes in the world. [Indecipherable word(s)] It's–it's–it's the flames, [indecipherable, possibly the word "climbing"] oh, four- or five-hundred feet into the sky and it ... it's a terrific crash, ladies and gentlemen. It's smoke, and it's flames now ... and the frame is crashing to the ground, not quite to the mooring-mast. Oh, the humanity and all the passengers screaming around here. I told you, I can't even talk to people whose friends are on there. Ah! It's–it's–it's–it's ... o–ohhh! I–I can't talk, ladies and gentlemen. Honest, it's just laying there, a mass of smoking wreckage. Ah! And everybody can hardly breathe and talk, and the screaming. Lady, I–I'm sorry. Honest: I–I can hardly breathe. I–I'm going to step inside where I cannot see it. Charlie, that's terrible. Ah, ah—I can't. I, listen, folks, I–I'm gonna have to stop for a minute because I've lost my voice. This is the worst thing I've ever witnessed.
My response was more disbelief at the idea that SD (or anyone) would attempt to use that as an actual rebuttal. Desperate times and all, yeah, but sheesh.
I apologize for crashing the forum just to defend our reporting. You folks have a great community here. But I can't let this fly without a response.
Brad, your comment here about our reporting appears, to me, to be untrue. We reached out to you through your PR rep, the same one who capably set up your excellent guest editorial about Windows 8 on Kotaku earlier this year. We reached out yesterday to ensure you had ample time to comment, given the impact we knew this story could have on your reputation and given our desire to present a balanced story. We received no comment by our 10am ET Thursday deadline. We held the story back and asked for comment again. Still nothing.
It is understandable to me that, sometimes, a person who is the subject of a story doesn't want to comment, so my reporter and I assumed that was the case. As is Kotaku's policy, we noted that we requested comment and said we would update our story if we heard back.
In response to us giving you more than 12 hours notice about this story, we not only received no comment but we then saw a lengthy comment appear quite swiftly on Joystiq. I remain puzzled why you didn't have that comment sent to us.
We still have no comments from you or Stardock in my inbox, in my reporter's, in our tips inbox or anywhere else. As far as I can tell, we have received no comment from you or Stardock in general.
Your comments in this thread, however, have enabled us to put more of your side of the story into our piece. As soon as we saw your first big comment, we added it.
The accusations in our article are just that: accusations. Everything is alleged. Nothing is proven. In the future, if you wish to comment, my reporter's e-mail address is on her story. Mine is stephentotilo at kotaku dot com.
-Stephen Totilo
Editor-in-Chief, Kotaku.com
Brad's company is probably like his forums - you pretend to be his friend or it's sayonara, sucker! Once FE gets released and nobody buys it, he's probably going to lay everyone off, anyways.
This thread is amazing.
+1! Like! Agree! Upvote!
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