Guild Wars studio fires two employees after Twitter clash with streamer

One sad aspect of this is that the streamer in question (Deroir, also a longstanding official studio community “partner” -- he even has an NPC in the game named after him) was a fan of the employee whom he ended up clashing with. There’s a video of him pre-incident gushing over the contributions by the employee in a recent Reddit AMA: https://clips.twitch.tv/CrypticMistyStingrayDxCat

Never meet your heroes.

Also, one-sided articles like this make it really hard for me to take TheVerge’s brand of journalism seriously.

The guy said 'allow me to disagree slightly' after complimenting her on her thread and she lashed out at him in a highly unprofessional manner.

Thinking you can interact with customers of your employer like this in public even on a private account is naive.

Trying to turn it into an oppressor/sexism shitshow is being a toxic employee and a liability.

Hard to see a scandal..

This really seems like a missed opportunity for the company, the dev and the community, in that this could have been a teaching moment all around.

However, seeing her responses after being fired, it may have been a lost cause. She screwed up massively, because she launched invective at the wrong target because she was frustrated, and even after, she was unapologetic.

But in theory, she could have learned that your frustration with others doesn't entitle you to spew negativity at anyone who offers a counter thought, and appealing to your own authority doesn't prove your point.

Unfortunately, this community sounds like the toxicity has already brewed into a dark sludge of misaligned incentives. If the company doesn't get ahead of it (or the community learning how to police itself), I can see this situation having a greater cost to both sides.