As if the headline wasn't already a giveaway, perhaps the news post here will show how little sympathy I have towards Mike Sacco. Mike Sacco accused Borderlands 2 writer, Anthony Burch of writing the character Tiny Tina as a racist character that was insulting to black people. There were claims that Tiny Tina's lingo was akin to "stereotypical low class 'black' lingo" made the character into a "verbal blackface."
From there, things just snowballed out of control. A lengthy back and forth between Sacco and Burch over Twitter soon caught the attention of a number of people, including Gearbox's own Randy Pitchford whom defended Burch and his writing. The snowball gathered speed, and soon game communities all over began debating on whether or not Tiny Tina and her liberal use of the word "badonkadonk" was actually racist or not. Most people were fairly sane about the subject, saying that it was not at all racist.
People, like myself, felt that the only reason it was even being considered as racist is because people wanted it to be about race, not because it actually was. Needless to say, Sacco's employer, Cryptozoic was catching a lot of heat since they hired Sacco as a contractor on their World of Warcraft trading card game.
Cryptozoic asked Sacco to not represent himself as an employee of Cryptozoic. They also asked him to tone back on talking about the "controversy" so publicly.
Sacco, in what can only be described as "throwing a temper tantrum" then quit his contracting position with Cryptozoic. This was only after initially lying by saying that the company fired him. He did not agree to the stipulation to cut back on talking about the controversy and quit thusly. The problem is, Mike Sacco's Twitter profile says that if anybody tweets at him about Tiny Tina, he will block them. This was changed long before he quit his job with Cryptozoic. Perhaps Sacco didn't realize that you can't make the claim you quit for one reason and then threaten to block people for trying to talk to you about the subject that led to you wanting to quit.
Some choice Tweets from Sacco over his poor handling of the situation can be found over at Kotaku.
Perhaps the most humiliating and ironic thing about all of this is the fact that Mike Sacco was working with the World of Warcraft IP during his contracting work on the trading card game. WoW is a series that is just ripe with stereotypes. Knowing this, Sacco's outrage and handling of the situation came across as a bit of the "pot calling the kettle black" scenario, followed up with a childish fit in which he quit.
From there, things just snowballed out of control. A lengthy back and forth between Sacco and Burch over Twitter soon caught the attention of a number of people, including Gearbox's own Randy Pitchford whom defended Burch and his writing. The snowball gathered speed, and soon game communities all over began debating on whether or not Tiny Tina and her liberal use of the word "badonkadonk" was actually racist or not. Most people were fairly sane about the subject, saying that it was not at all racist.
People, like myself, felt that the only reason it was even being considered as racist is because people wanted it to be about race, not because it actually was. Needless to say, Sacco's employer, Cryptozoic was catching a lot of heat since they hired Sacco as a contractor on their World of Warcraft trading card game.
Cryptozoic asked Sacco to not represent himself as an employee of Cryptozoic. They also asked him to tone back on talking about the "controversy" so publicly.
To clarify, Mike Sacco was never an employee of Cryptozoic Entertainment. He was a contractor.
We asked him not represent himself as an employee of Cryptozoic. After the message was delivered, Mike quit. We like Mike and we are as surprised by his reaction as you are.
We asked him not represent himself as an employee of Cryptozoic. After the message was delivered, Mike quit. We like Mike and we are as surprised by his reaction as you are.
Sacco, in what can only be described as "throwing a temper tantrum" then quit his contracting position with Cryptozoic. This was only after initially lying by saying that the company fired him. He did not agree to the stipulation to cut back on talking about the controversy and quit thusly. The problem is, Mike Sacco's Twitter profile says that if anybody tweets at him about Tiny Tina, he will block them. This was changed long before he quit his job with Cryptozoic. Perhaps Sacco didn't realize that you can't make the claim you quit for one reason and then threaten to block people for trying to talk to you about the subject that led to you wanting to quit.
Some choice Tweets from Sacco over his poor handling of the situation can be found over at Kotaku.
Perhaps the most humiliating and ironic thing about all of this is the fact that Mike Sacco was working with the World of Warcraft IP during his contracting work on the trading card game. WoW is a series that is just ripe with stereotypes. Knowing this, Sacco's outrage and handling of the situation came across as a bit of the "pot calling the kettle black" scenario, followed up with a childish fit in which he quit.


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