So the Gearbox CEO is once again in hot water over a dumb decision he’s made. This time it’s likely the worst thing he’s done strictly online. This past weekend Pitchford decided it was a good idea to retweet a disgusting video involving animal cruelty. The video itself depicts a crab attacking and wounding a cat, and predictably, a great number of people were angry that the video was so callously shared.
He decided to try and placate the backlash to his ignorant choice by spewing some nonsense about his curiosity needing to be satisfied and that he wanted to know how other people reacted to the disgusting content.
I tend to favor curiosity and disfavor setting up a feeling and empathetic creature for discomfort. Yet among the negative reactions I felt watching this, there’s also some other stuff that isn’t exactly negative. This makes me curious about how other people react…
— Randy Pitchford (@DuvalMagic) May 26, 2019
It seems that old Randy just can’t help himself with doing stupid things. The Gearbox executive has made a mess of so many things recently that it’s hard not to question his fitness as a public figure. There’s the time in which he was forced to backtrack a bit on microtransactions being in Borderlands 3, going so far as to call Game Informer and those criticizing him as liars. Pitchford is also allegedly involved in taking millions of dollars from Gearbox employees as a “bonus” and physically assaulting the voice actor behind Claptrap.
Suffice to say, we now know pretty well what Randy Pitchford’s standards for behavior are. If Twitter, who quickly suspended the original account that Pitchford retweeted, has higher standards than a major gaming industry CEO, this says a lot. Keep in mind that Twitter is a playground for bigotry, political propaganda, and Nazi filth. That’s the company making a better snap judgment than Randy Pitchford.
And as many gamers are promising not to buy Borderlands 3 as a protest for Pitchford’s actions, it’s getting harder and harder for the wider industry not to see their point. Borderlands 3 is likely going to sell millions of copies regardless of the CEO’s actions, but that won’t stop the internet from despising the man for his screwups.
