Steam's sales are more than just good will, though - a publisher marks down their sci-fi FPS to keep it competitive with new sci-fi FPS releases from other publishers. Good games, deeper support, and happy customers still drive that market - if anything, removing the utter dependency on that first month of new sales…

He's was a creative director, not a PR guy - he wasn't hired based on his training or competence with interacting with the public, much less his ability to coddle to complainers. He failed to perform at one tangential aspect of his job and that's worthy of losing it? Only to someone in the depths of corporate-culture…

You can be bad at public relations and still be great at creative development.

I think people have really latched on to the phrase 'blatantly anti-consumer' in regards to this discussion, and I don't think that's necessarily accurate. Steam has shown that publishers are more than willing to deeply discount their software when they don't have to compete with their own retail copies (that have a…

Well, Kotaku, to much reader approval, called the lack of openness between gamers and the industry 'the biggest problem in gaming' last August. Personally, I think the lack of honesty between people is the source of all conflict, from gaming to the world at large - sanctifying willful ignorance and idiocy is to the…

Clearly I'm in the minority; this incident indicates most gamers would still rather hear the news in a carefully-worded marketing-department-approved press release.

I'm not 'offended,' I just find the public outcry over this moronic and nobody else seemed like they could be bothered to not throw more wood on the sacrificial bonfire (though, thankfully, Cliff Bleszkini tackled it this afternoon). Of course people can be upset over non-hunger issues, but this is about as trivial as…

And... it basically sounds like a toned-down Gangnam Style.

Thank you as well, I've also appreciated having this conversation - you've given me a lot to think about!

No question there, he definitely shouldn't have responded to the crowd. Sadly, that just builds the wall of corporate decorum bullshit ever higher, further chilling the openness of the industry to its audience.

But who gets 'pissed off' at a broad, vague insult? Nobody remotely sensible, and conforming to meet the expectations of the senseless is a detriment to all of us. Nobody here has a legitimate cause to be upset - he didn't meet some arbitrary expectation of nicety? He's subservient to the most prudish mores because…

If we Internet-lynched everybody who did their job poorly until they had to quit, very few people would still have their jobs. It is completely ok - preferable, even - to dismiss baseless whining and shallow-at-best hurt feelings. It's counterproductive to pander to the squeakiest wheel, and MS has generally done a…

It was your weird metaphor. How about 'just because it's a contentious issue doesn't mean the mob has to contend with it.'

• I wouldn't want someone fired, even if they were snide enough to tell me to 'deal with it,' because why would I give a shit what they say? I don't need them to recite a corporate script affecting some false humility to tell me 'I'm sorry, sir, that's not something we're going to be able to accommodate right at this…

Yes, he should have known better, but that doesn't change the fact that it only costs people their jobs because of the sadly-inevitable shitstorm of overreaction from people acting like they've been deeply offended.

He was tweeting back and forth with a friend. He made a mistake in protocol, no question, but the Internet lynch mob piled on him because bullies move in packs.

Being hot doesn't justify burning.

It's not just first party sales - if EA, Activision and Ubisoft didn't want this to happen, it wouldn't. We don't really know what the impact be - I'm sure those publishers all have hard numbers on how many new copies with free online passes were sold and how many online passes were sold to people who bought used.…

Neat!

Sure, they monitor social media, but they also aren't going to change their plans based on the vitriolic feedback from and easily-manipulated-by-marketing audience of reactionaries. Look back at people complaining about the original Xbox Live's broadband requirements (for example) - they didn't change it because they…