I don';t know, but Tweets calling GoG a bunch of dicks supports my argument. Instead your post makes you look like an idiot...

Hm, I've just read his last twitter statements and I don't like his attitude at all. Maybe I'm wrong, but it feels like he's a hothead alright.

Anyway, I hope he'll come down to Earth and make a deal with GOG. That price though... Sigh.

Maybe some day you will get a clue too. Because I have been offered a franchise business in the past (which I declined) and it doesn't involve hand-holding a lawyer every step in the process. I've also been tangentially involved in supplier negotiation. You frequently have new suppliers trying to get in the door. At worst, you negotiate terms and draw up a contract. Most of the time, a lawyer never gets involved and "the contract" is often just E-mail correspondence. It's all documented and the only time a lawyer might potentially get involved is if there is a breach.

I'd expect these games are probably a little more formalized, but I severely doubt you have lawyers involved all the way through the process. At best, you might have one look over the final contract before signing.

And what happens if you do not like the terms of the contract?

You don't sign.

You can ask for changes, but don't expect GoG to cave on clauses that are likely there for a very good reason...

While I think Blow's decision to not sign was a totally valid and sensible one given what he wants for his game, broadcasting details (along with his feelings) about sensitive business negotations on social media was indeed a dick move, and he was totally in the wrong for doing that.

Indeed, so if gOg do not give and Blow do not agree, then a deal will not be done. And the reasons of the contract maybe what Blow consider to be in gOg's favour, and not equal, which is why he probably did not sign (neither you nor me know exactly what is in it). So, I would say, a reasonable, and sensible, ourse of actions from both parties.
Aye, which I said earlier, it was an unprofessional move.

I haven't been active in game development, but it is my understanding that generally, when there are millions of dollars on the line, lawyers are very much involved. This article is a bit old, but the process seems to involve a bit more than drawing up a standard contract (although I'm sure that they have a standard proposal that they give to smaller developers):

I have to completely agree with you on that, it's incredibly unprofessional. If I were the other party, in this case GOG, a dick move like that would more or less kill the deal for me unless the potential financial rewards were high enough to justify continuing negotiations, and knowing that further dick moves are more likely than not.

There really is no place for such extreme emotional displays over stuff like this. He says he doesn't really need or care about GOG but if that is really true then not being able to negotiate terms that work for him well would be of no real emotional consequence. The fact that he's even being that emotional over it shows that it is important enough to even have such emotions to begin with. All negotiations over anything involve actual caring about what is being negotiated. The more emotional one is when trying to portray they don't care, the more likely they do care and that's why they're having the emotions in the first place - because they care strongly and they aren't getting what they want so they throw a public tantrum about it like that is somehow going to get them what they want.

It doesn't, it burns bridges. Not only for their current thing, but potentially for future opportunities also, although they may not be aware and never be aware of that actually happening. A friend of mine who is a musician used to badmouth the competition in private conversation often, however these were sometimes overheard and relayed by 3rd parties back to those that were being badmouthed. This lead to him losing out on a variety of opportunities for work due to the combined power that those wronged had with negotiations for gigs etc. He had no idea he was being turned down for jobs because of how he bad-talked others behind the scenes. Some people were very upset about some of the things he said too, but the shitty part is that he was just mindlessly bullshitting and didn't really have any strong feelings against anyone, so he shot himself in the foot and burned a lot of bridges for no real benefit to himself and blindly caused himself harm in the process.

The only way I know about it is because one of the people who were harmed by his words confided in me things that occurred and how they went about dealing with it. Word spread like wildfire behind the scenes to collude to make it difficult for my buddy to get a gig job anywhere, and it was working too as he found it increasingly difficult to book gigs over time. I very carefully brought it up with my buddy one time without breaking anyone's confidence and touched upon the fine points in a way that basically told him "you're losing gigs because you sometimes have a negative big mouth about other people and while you're not aware of it, others are listening and it's causing you to lose work and I have that on good authority". He took it hard but it had an effect on him. He's a good guy overall but just had some rather unfortunate bad habits about down-talking people even when he didn't really mean any harm to anyone. Ever since, he's stopped doing that and now pays high respect to all musicians even if he personally doesn't care for their style or their music. He gets more music gigs than he knows what to do with now.

Mumble mumble... something about honey and guns... :)

Read that paragraph and disagreed that Mr Blow truly is in that particular category right now. Then read the third and fourth paragraph and Bingo! That's what it feels like to me. Thing is, also, that he might feel like he's on top of the world right now and can brush aside a platform (and badmouth it) without repercussions. Doesn't mean his situation or his options in distributing his games tomorrow won't change. Not sure GoG would shrug his games because of the attitude, they're a business after all. Here's hoping they're more professional with him than he seems to be.

Then again I don't know the man personally. Maybe he's not that bad...

Yes, sometimes good people can be overly emotional publicly in a way that is self-harming. This seems particularly common in the world of indie game developers, some to the point where they get so emotional/upset about the whole experience either with their userbase and/or the publishers/distributors that they just let out all of their emotions on twitter etc. and make themselves look even worse, then often get teased/chastised for doing so after and perhaps it gets worse. Look at the author of Fez for example, he really burned bridges across the board then left the gaming industry completely IIRC. He might be a great guy face to face in real life though, hard to say. The Internet can bring out the worst in even the best of people's emotions and behaviour. And what's worse is once that it is out there, there's no taking it back when they cool down, even if they wish they hadn't said or done some things.

A more recent example is the developer of the indie game Paranautical Activity that got upset over something not going right with their attempts to get their game on Steam, so he threatened to kill or harm Gabe Newell on Twitter. Even though he probably didn't literally mean that, people can go to jail for saying things like that whether they really mean it or not, and if it is in a highly visible public place then there is no he-said/she-said way of denying it. Not sure if he got in any legal trouble over that, but it cost him his job and reputation that's for sure, and could have cost the company lost opportunity to sell their game on Steam if Valve chose to decide to not sell their game.

In short, people need to smarten the F up, and get their temper and emotions under control online, especially when acting in a professional context or one which could be looked back on under such scrutiny. As a completely different example of this, look at that drunk female doctor in Miami that trashed the Uber guy's car a few weeks ago and may have lost her internship at the hospital as a result and trashed her reputation as a doctor, all over excessive drinking and having a bad day.

Reputations are hard to make, easy to break, difficult to recover from once they've been soiled.

The Paranautical dev didn't lose his job over it (at least not immediately):
http://www.polygon.com/2014/11/15/7225431/gabe-newell-death-threat-indie-dev-code-avarice-paranautical-activity

And their game seems to be on Steam with the best title ever:
Paranautical Activity: Deluxe Atonement Edition
http://store.steampowered.com/app/250580/

I think alot of people have met / known impulsive big mouths, and know they are not all complete a-holes. They can be helpful in making decisions, getting ideas flowing, etc. They just need people to get them focused... and maybe not be the representative of their company on the web (or not be on social media at all).

As for the female doctor story, keep in mind that most of us do/say stupid things and the internet has only amplified that (it seems). Teens and kids have, probably and arguably, done it more than the older folks out there. At some point they won't be able to show someone's bad judgement without having their own shown back to them. Not that it would have helped in the case of the doctor, but some lesser cases of bad judgement or for someone in an occupation that's not based primarily on reputation and said judgement.

Difficult to recover from a bad reputation, but not impossible. There's worst things to do than to have a big mouth (like drunk driving!). But there's consequences to having one.

IIRC he voluntarily left the studio, no doubt under strong pressure too. The exact details don't really matter though as does the fact that he did leave the studio and probably would not have had he not made that bad judgment on Twitter. It looks like he did not lose out on his share of the game profit afterall in the end but only due to things changing after the fact of what was previously published. Valve pulled their game over it and most likely his departure from the studio as reported in the news and very careful conversations between the company with Valve putting out fires are what brought the game back. Had he stayed at the studio, that would have likely had a huge effect in making the game not show up there. Him exiting, the game coming back after the put the fires out with Valve and it becoming successful as a result, and the healing of time may have afforded him the extreme luxury of having an opportunity to come back to his job in the end, but he's lucky to have such an opportunity for a second chance after a career-ending-move like that honestly. He probably would have found it next to impossible to get a job anywhere else in the industry after a blunder like that really.



Indeed. I'd fire someone like that and not look back personally. It's hard enough to make it in that industry as it is without ill tempered employees stoking the fires uncontrollably on social media. Their skills at helping a company aren't worth anything in the end if they can make a 10 second emotional blunder that causes the walls to cave in and years of work to fall apart. In the case of that game, someone was able to salvage the situation obviously but that isn't always going to be the case.

Yup, the doctor really did need to face consequences for her actions, and while she got off on avoiding being charged, she didn't get off so easily in popular opinion and her reputation that's for sure. The harassment she and her family have faced since then online I would go as far as saying is disproportionately large compared to her actual "crime", and I say that without sticking up for her in any way. Sometimes people do deserve the consequences of the public eye for their actions, but sometimes the public can overdo it too and without any compassion and empathy with an overly-aggressive and blind lynch-mob mentality. Some people were telling her to kill herself or saying they'd rape her for example. Both of those reactions are not only overdoing it, but they're just as bad or worse than what she actually did. I wonder if the people who said those hurtful things would have their own jobs if their identities were widely reported in the news for making such comments. :)

The Internet can bring out the worst in people sometimes, and make it so easy for them to do in real time without any checks and balances and without any buffers, making each one of us have to be our own buffers and be on our best at all times. We aren't always on our best, but hopefully we are more often than not, and when not - hopefully we're not extremely overdoing it and ending up a viral Internet sensation being lynched around the world. :)

Sad to read. Agreed with most of what you said (though I'm not sure I'd let go a big mouth as fast as you, but I'll probably never be in a situation to make that choice anyway). Thanks for the conversation. Vive internet. :)

First, there are not millions of dollars involved here. Second what you linked refers to GoG's efforts to bring back classic games from people who own the rights but may never have negotiated a deal in their lives. On top of making sure that person really has those rights.

What we have here is a modern game developer with no prior contracts from the "retail box" days who has already dealt with Steam and set a price, knows what DRM-free means and clearly has the rights to the game. If you are trying to tell me every developer on Steam is tying up this much time and resources for games like Bad Rats, then I'll tell you you are smoking something.

Just read the "The search for game rights (a diary-esque thread)" and see the stories of rights headaches. Old games are a mess and I fully believe that is true for them. Current games, there is a standard contract, you negotiate concessions (like what the release will look like). Negotiate some upfront payment if needed, etc.

But even in the worst case scenario you've copied, notice how the lawyers only really get involved once the terms have been settled. No one is going to pay a lawyer $600 an hour to sit through the entire negotiation phase...