Results tagged ‘ 38 Studios ’
More horror stories from 38 Studios
Craig Calcaterra over atHardball Talk has been all over the epic failure that was once known as 38 Studios. The thing has been a hot mess and like me the dude has covered it from day one.
It has been a putrid set of affairs, ripe with hypocrisy & filled with, at best, recklessness and, at worst, fraud on the part of Curt Schilling and his business partners.
He has written one more piece that he hopes you’ll read before you “wash your hands” of the whole stinking mess:
We’ve heard a lot of back and forth about what went down with the folding of Curt Schilling’s company. The Rhode Island politicians have grandstanded, Curt Schilling has postured and there is enough ugliness to it all that most people may want to wash their hands of it.
But before you wash your hands of it, go read this account of the spouse of a 38 Studios employee. In it she explains just how quickly and thoroughly her family was uprooted, then cut loose and then dealt a series of devastating financial blows at the hands of a company which didn’t seem to give a crap. It’s nothing short of harrowing.
And no, the point here isn’t to mock and shame Curt Schilling. He’s a handy tie-in to make this quasi-relevant to a baseball blog, I will admit that. The point is to highlight a scenario in which a government bent over backwards to lure business (while caring little if any to regulate business) while a company treated its employees like tax-break and incentive vouchers, caring little for what happened to them the moment money stopped being made.
I really hope you click over and read the link in his piece.
It’s a good precautionary tale that I think everyone needs to check out in this day & age of “hyper-capitalism”.
More 38 Studios Ugliness
Okay, this isn’t really breaking news, as most of this has been circulating around the Interwebs in various forms of rumor for a while now, but the more layers you peel off of this story the more repulsive it seems.
From Broken Toys comes this:
While all this was happening, 38Studios employees were kept completely in the dark. Their first warning was when payroll checks stopped showing up in their bank accounts.
The final warning was a dismissal letter showing all the compassion of Ayn Rand towards welfare recipients.
And that’s just what’s on the public record so far.
The rumors that have been surrounding this total collapse/clusterbomb have made the above look like a case study in business management.
Insurance plans unpaid for months (and literally uncovered by pregnant women informed by their doctor that their insurance expired) ensuring that the newly laid off employees are disqualified for COBRA and liable for pre-existing conditions with new plans …
… relocation/home sales packages so badly mismanaged that ‘beneficiaries’ turned out to be liable for two mortgages and back taxes due to lack of payment, the list goes on.
First off, that email laying off everyone is wrong in so many ways.
These employees were loyal beyond belief. They stuck it out when they weren’t drawing paychecks (or at the very least were receiving them late). They deserved more than a mass email. They deserved for that big bag of wind to show up & tell them face to face.
Mr. “All Go, No Quit” Harry Stamper Curt Schilling should have used some of his magical mmo powers to conjure up a nut sack and shown up to thank each & everyone of them for their undying loyalty one employee at a time.
Secondly, the insurance stuff.
Are. You. F***in’. Kiddin’?
Now you have people with pre-existing conditions, including pregnant women who are without insurance, or any hope of acquiring some because you asshats mismanaged the company?
Are you going to run out & campaign for more conservatives that would do their best to repeal the only chance those individuals sole chance at landing an insurance provider right now? Color me curious you f***in’ clown.
And finally, the mortgage fiasco.
What. The. Holy. Hell?
So you relocate the company from Massachusetts to soak up some taxpayer guaranteed loan action, tell employees you have a system in place to unload their homes (granted, in this market why anyone would have thought it’d be that easy is beyond me) & then not only fail to do so…but keep them in the dark about it.
Then you run your company into the ground, cry about how the big bag gum’int did you wrong & break the bad news about layoffs through an e-mail that has all of the compassion I’d expect from a mob hit.
Just When You Thought Curt Schilling Couldn’t Possibly Be A Bigger Hypocrite…
Curt Schilling, resident asshole says “Do as I say, not as I do”
If you read my blog you’re probably more than just a little bit aware of how big a raging f***in’ hypocrite Curt Schilling is. I have written about it rather extensively.
Well here goes the King of the Douche Bags again:
In his first public remarks on the company’s problems, Schilling told the newspaper for its Tuesday editions that public remarks by Gov. Lincoln Chafee that the state was trying to keep his company solvent were “devastating.” He said that shortly after those remarks, a video-game publisher pulled out of a deal to finance a new game.
“The governor is not operating in the best interest of the company by any stretch, or the taxpayers, or the state,” Schilling told the newspaper. “We’re trying to save this company and we’re working 24/7. The public commentary has been as big a piece of what’s happening to us as anything out there.”
F***in’ priceless. Just absolutely f***in’ priceless.
He spends his entire adult life spouting ultra-conservative philosophies, campaigns on behalf of John McCain, Scott Brown & others, supports some of the most diabolical, venomous conservatives (both here & in the U.K.) and openly attacks President Obama and the stimulus plan with quotes like this:
“There can be no question our country is in the worst economic crisis of our lifetimes. I also think there can be no question that it falls on us, the individuals, to find a way out of our own personal crisis.”
He then is more than happy to use said stimulus programs for his own company (via a loan guarantee program where taxpayers get stuck with the bill if a company goes under), the height of hypocrisy.
Now he has the nut sack to take a pot shot at the Governor of the state whose constituents are going to get stuck holding the tab after Schilling’s company defaulted on it’s 100 plus million dollar deal agreement.
Why?
Because the Governor dared to speak when he defaulted on those loan obligations
Yeah Curt, it’s the Governments fault for getting in the way of your bumbling ass when you were about to drop a $112 million tab on their laps.
