Guy Makes Outrageous Claims that Borderlands 2 is Racist, Ends up Quitting His Job in Temper Tantrum

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  • Shawn Zipay
    Managing Communities 24/7
    • Apr 2003
    • 69279

    #1

    Guy Makes Outrageous Claims that Borderlands 2 is Racist, Ends up Quitting His Job in Temper Tantrum

    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.
    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.

    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.
  • Linux
    wat da gah?
    • Sep 2026
    • 382

    #2
    What a childish derp on twitter. I think this is why I love watching twitter while working because of these childish blow ups on random topics like this, it is much amusement during my boring slow days haha.

    Comment

    • cikame
      Member
      • Jun 2011
      • 1799

      #3
      I don't think anything should be out of reach when it comes to fiction, same as comedy, it's all freedom of speech and no topics, or races, or lifestyles should be disqualified.
      Just because someone says something i don't like, doesn't give me the right to stop them.

      Comment

      • MurderDogg
        Member
        • Apr 2006
        • 53

        #4
        I am surprised that a large company didn`t automaticaly back down form an acusation of racism. Lets see if they are so brave when I accuse them of anti semitism.

        Sounds to me like Mr. Sacco said "badonkadonk", or da "N" bomb, in front of an Afro American who disagreed.

        Badonkadonk is not only racially degrading. It is also sexually degrading. It`s a metaphor comparing a womans posterior to that of a donkeys.

        Why is a white dude sticking up for the black community? Ok he did quit his job over some B.S. maybe he is half black ::::::

        Comment

        • DunkinSPE
          OT's Daddy Warbucks
          • Aug 2006
          • 452

          #5
          Gearbox has become my favorite gaming company. If you play any of their games you realize that they are all about humor and fun gameplay. I'm glad Randy took a stand for his guys on this issue. I hope they name a claptrap in the next DLC in honor of the idiot who was raising a stink about it.
          "We're all very different people. We're not Watusi. We're not Spartans. We're Americans, with a capital 'A', huh? You know what that means? Do ya? That means that our forefathers were kicked out of every decent country in the world. We are the wretched refuse. We're the underdog. We're mutts! Here's proof: his nose is cold! But there's no animal that's more faithful, that's more loyal, more loveable than the mutt." -John Winger (Bill Murray) Stripes

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