Kixeye Fires Four in Response to Racism Allegations

[Karloff]

Kixeye Fires Four in Response to Racism Allegations

Kixeye's CEO has taken action against alleged racists after being alerted to the problem via Twitter.

When one Kixeye contractor currently known only as Qu33riousity encountered racist attitudes in the workplace, Qu33riousity used a blog post to vent. The blog has since been taken down, but before that happened Kixeye CEO Will Harbin, following up on a Twitter alert, saw it. As a result, four Kixeye employees - three workers and a manager - are now out of a job.

Harbin describes the four as "bad apples" who "weren't living up to the standards that the rest of us are set." While Harbin was unwilling to comment directly on the allegations made by Qu33riousity, saying only that "not everything in the blog post was accurate," Harbin did say that he was embarrassed by the behaviour of the four terminated employees. The remainder of the affected team are undergoing harassment training to ensure that this doesn't happen again, and Harbin is taking company-wide steps to eradicate any other problems.

Qu33riousity's rage, according to Kotaku [http://kotaku.com/5948422/serious-racism-allegations-levelled-at-video-game-developer], was sparked by a manager's comments that Qu33riousity was dressing too "thuggish." When Qu33riousity responded with allegations of racism and homophobia, the reply was "you're too sensitive" and "we don't even tolerate people bringing up concerns of racism here." The original Kotaku report suggested that Qu33riousity intended to take legal action as a result of this incident.

Kixeye, the Facebook game maker formerly known as Casual Collective, is probably most widely known - outside of San Francisco, anyway - for this recruitment video. [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/118821-Kixeye-Recruits-With-Unicorns-Helicopters-Maniacal-Children] Their lineup includes Battle Pirates, Backyard Monsters and Desktop Defender, among others.

Source: Will Harbin [http://www.twitlonger.com/show/jh72ja]


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[antidonkey]

So all thugs are black and gay? I'm massively confused by this. Last time I checked, thugs come from all sorts of ethnic backgrounds and what the hell does homophobia have to do with any of this?

 

[Some_weirdGuy]

So all thugs are black and gay? I'm massively confused by this. Last time I checked, thugs come from all sorts of ethnic backgrounds and what the hell does homophobia have to do with any of this?

Yeah, it really does sound like a legitimate case of crocodile tears and the dude trying to pull the race card (and gay card?), only to be told to stop being an idiot...

Sure, he should be able to wear what he wants but... have a cup of concrete why don't you princess? Someone says your clothes look funny, (or in this case 'thuggish') well just tell them you like your clothes that way.

Short of them sitting you down and telling you you have to get rid of the clothes, I don't really see how this would even phase someone.

 

[Zombie_Moogle]

Apparently the CEO thought it serious enough to take action. They fired 4 people, which i think is significant; if they were just scapegoating to look good publicly, they'd have fired 1 guy. 4 employees fired at once? Something was up

As far as the homophobia bit, check the source articles. There were homosexual and transgendered employees getting similar treatment

Could be serious. Could be bullshit. None of us can know, & likely may never know

 

[elilupe]

As someone who read the original blog post, it was more than just being told to stop dressing "thuggish". Qu33riousity also observed his co-workers call a Puerto-Rican coworker a wetback, and they told Qu33riousity he dressed like Run DMC, which, as he displayed by posting a picture of himself that day compared to a picture of Run DMC, he definitely didn't. I'm not saying Qu33riousity is completely in the right here, he probably did over-react a bit, but there is more to this than just getting his clothes called "thuggish".

 

[minuialear]

So all thugs are black and gay? I'm massively confused by this. Last time I checked, thugs come from all sorts of ethnic backgrounds and what the hell does homophobia have to do with any of this?

No; as per the original Kotaku article (or even the blog post, if you had had a chance to read it), what happened was that the blogger first commented that the "thuggish" comment was racist, and then began to point out other problems of racism/sexism/homophobia in the office that he perceived. He didn't say that accusing someone of being a thug specifically was homophobic (though "thug" and "urban" are most often used as codewords for "poor and black/latino," so him claiming the comment was racist wasn't necessarily too off-base).