Leisure Suit Larry Creator Quits Company After Boss's Sex Offense Conviction

[BlameTheWizards]

Leisure Suit Larry Creator Quits Company After Boss's Sex Offense Conviction

Replay Games head Paul Trowe pled guilty to showing an explicit video to a minor, resulting in his conviction and veteran game developer Al Lowe to returning to retirement.


Leisure Suit Larry creator Al Lowe has left publisher Replay Games, saying his decision was based in part on a recent guilty plea of Replay boss Paul Trowe to showing an explicit video to a minor. Trowe, who said he sent the video to a young woman without knowing her age, entered a plea bargain which got him two years probation and mandatory sex offender counseling. Texas-based Replay Games released Leisure Suit Larry: Reloaded this summer, after raising more than $650,000 on Kickstarter in 2012. It was a remake of the first game in Lowe's Leisure Suit Larry series, first released in 1987.

According to Kotaku, Lowe resigned from all active roles at Replay Games on Dec. 3. "There were many reasons for my departure, including that incident," he said of Trowe's conviction. "As far as I know, Replay Games still has the rights (from Codemasters, owners of the I.P.) to do Leisure Suit Larry games, but they'll have to do them without me."

As you can imagine, the details leading to Trowe's conviction are pretty explicit and change depending on who's side of the story you're hearing. The entire story is <a href=http://kotaku.com/leisure-suit-larry-publisher-in-upheaval-after-strange-1481988709>up on Kotaku for those of you interested in reading further.

Source: <a href=http://kotaku.com/leisure-suit-larry-publisher-in-upheaval-after-strange-1481988709>Kotaku via <a href=http://www.polygon.com/2013/12/12/5205336/leisure-suit-larry-creator-al-lowe-quits-comeback-company-replay>Polygon

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[J Tyran]

If that sordid little story is true at least he wasn't some kind of sex predator exploiting a young person below the age of consent, he just had shockingly poor judgment and should have known better than to show a young girl of uncertain age that video.

Spoiler: summery of official story as the legal proceedings describe it

Older publisher and husband have sex with a man in his mid 20s, the young girl responds to text messages sent to mid 20s guy asking why they are sending messages to her "boyfriend". Dispute breaks out over whats going on, publisher guy arranges for the girl to see a video of above mentioned sex without determining her age.

What isn't mentioned though is was there an investigation into the young man to see if there as a sexual relationship between him and the young girl, if there was thats much more serious than a stupid person being stupid.

 

[Albino Boo]

What isn't mentioned though is was there an investigation into the young man to see if there as a sexual relationship between him and the young girl, if there was thats much more serious than a stupid person being stupid.

That would a different case and not tried at the same time. The precise nature of the relationship has no bearing on this case.

 

[J Tyran]

What isn't mentioned though is was there an investigation into the young man to see if there as a sexual relationship between him and the young girl, if there was thats much more serious than a stupid person being stupid.

That would a different case and not tried at the same time. The precise nature of the relationship has no bearing on this case.

Agreed but it should receive some scrutiny nonetheless, it is tied into whatever was going on there in the first place.

 

[LordLundar]

According to Kotaku, Lowe resigned from all active roles at Replay Games on Dec. 3. "There were many reasons for my departure, including that incident," he said of Trowe's conviction. "As far as I know, Replay Games still has the rights (from Codemasters, owners of the I.P.) to do Leisure Suit Larry games, but they'll have to do them without me."

And it's not going to happen. [a href=http://venturebeat.com/2013/12/11/leisure-suit-larry-creator-al-lowe-leaves-replay-games-exclusive/]GamesBeat had an Exclusive on this up on their site for a few days now[/a] and Paul Trowe made a venomous comment on it:

Well, I hope you guys are proud of yourselves. Now there will never be another Leisure Suit Larry game ever made again. Congratulations. And before you kick me while I'm down, or throw me under the bus again, try and remember who brought you back Al Lowe and another Larry game. Well, it's over. Oh, and by the way, Al really did say those EXACT words on our company conference call. It wasn't the quote he wanted in the article, but it was EXACTLY what he said on the call with the entire company listening. But it doesn't matter, because you will say what you'll say and that's that.

 

[Therumancer]

Seems to me that Al Lowe probably wanted out of his dealings with this company and the remakes to begin with. As far as Trowe's part of this entire thing it isn't that big a deal nowadays. Despite my opinion on gay men, the bottom line is that it's legally not currently considered unusually deviant sexual behavior or anything. The entire case pretty much revolves around bad judgement on the part of an adult, and honestly while this might make me warped to the minds of some, today 16 year olds aren't exactly innocent and especially at that age tend to track down porn and adult entertainment material by the truckload, something which goes for both genders, and frankly despite common perceptions I think the girls are worse than the boys here.

As someone else pointed out this case has other issues involved in it, like the 20-something guy having sex with a 16 year old which are a much bigger deal. What happened with Trowe seems to more or less be collateral damage from another investigation. What's more the entire motivation seems to be Trowe more or less trying to protect this girl by showing that her older boyfriend was apparently a piece of work, since I'm guessing this gay affair was pretty recent, regardless of how the meeting was actually arranged that lead to the showing.

Trowe himself seems to mostly be getting a slap on the wrist as a technicality, and I'd imagine once he's "covered" bureaucratically, the biggest part of this is going to be him called on to testify against the young man on some level. Really we aren't hearing any of the details that don't involve him, because he's the "famous" one, and really I think that's the tip of the iceberg here.

At any rate, given how relatively minor this is I kind of figure Al wanted to leave anyway despite initially wanting to be on board. It's possible he wants to get away from the "Leisure Suit Larry" remakes due to Trowe being outed as gay. LSL has largely been a somewhat soft core heterosexual sex romp, the stuff of straight male fantasy (or a satire on it more accurately). Given how sexually charged it is to begin with, having someone involved at the helm that apparently isn't interested in girls could be... awkward from a sales perspective.

It's not like Al is someone who is going to be concerned with being labeled a pervert by association or whatever, because his very body of work already makes it quite clear... he's a perv, but then again there isn't necessarily anything wrong with that within limits to begin with, and this little soap opera doesn't really affect him especially seeing as at it's core it isn't even really about the sex acts themselves but about some side drama and whether or not it was appropriate to prove the cheating of a minor's "other" with a video was appropriate (which it was not).

 

[Spaceman Spiff]

I feel bad for that Trowe guy. He'd have no reason to suspect that the guy's girlfriend would be a minor. It's pretty scary how easy it is to be deemed a sex offender.

 

[LordLundar]

I feel bad for that Trowe guy. He'd have no reason to suspect that the guy's girlfriend would be a minor. It's pretty scary how easy it is to be deemed a sex offender.

Don't. The conviction is only one part of it. A (much larger) part is because of Trowes bullying of former employees and attitudes on par to Phil Fish that Mr. Lowe just heard about.

 

[Hagi]

Weird...

I'd have figured the main issue would be Trowe sending a video of another man having sex without that man's consent... I mean that's something he actually knew about and something I'd consider actually criminal.

Whilst it's certainly stupid for him to have send that video to an unknown girlfriend, even if he had the man's consent, I don't think that should be criminal, especially if as he claims it was on request of the girlfriend ( should be verifiable, both likely have records on their own phones and their telcom is certain to have them as well. Possibly even the NSA ).

 

[Albino Boo]

What isn't mentioned though is was there an investigation into the young man to see if there as a sexual relationship between him and the young girl, if there was thats much more serious than a stupid person being stupid.

That would a different case and not tried at the same time. The precise nature of the relationship has no bearing on this case.

Agreed but it should receive some scrutiny nonetheless, it is tied into whatever was going on there in the first place.

I was short of time before, but what I meant to say was that there probably has been scrutiny. The names of the other 2 parties are unknown and even if a case has come to court the there is nothing in the public domain to link the two cases and any outcome has gone unreported.

 

[WWmelb]

At any rate, given how relatively minor this is I kind of figure Al wanted to leave anyway despite initially wanting to be on board. It's possible he wants to get away from the "Leisure Suit Larry" remakes due to Trowe being outed as gay. LSL has largely been a somewhat soft core heterosexual sex romp, the stuff of straight male fantasy (or a satire on it more accurately). Given how sexually charged it is to begin with, having someone involved at the helm that apparently isn't interested in girls could be... awkward from a sales perspective.

Trowe was hardly "outed" as gay by this from what i can tell. He's been with his partner/husband for 15 years, and seems to have been pretty open about it, not that there is anything to be open about. He's a a married adult... gives a shit if it's to a guy.

I feel bad for that Trowe guy. He'd have no reason to suspect that the guy's girlfriend would be a minor. It's pretty scary how easy it is to be deemed a sex offender.

Don't. The conviction is only one part of it. A (much larger) part is because of Trowes bullying of former employees and attitudes on par to Phil Fish that Mr. Lowe just heard about.

Someone being an asshole boss isn't valid reason to be glad they will now appear on sexual offenders lists everywhere they go. On the surface of this, it doesn't seem like the conviction was warranted but i reserve the right to change my view if more details are released.


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