Profile of SturmtigerCobra

I was fine moving on after Gearbox. But when my former boss starts mouthing off about various aspects of my employment including “how highly compensated” I was and how “generous” he is, I feel obligated to correct the record.
I had a lot of mixed feelings when asked to reprise the role of Claptrap late last year and eventually realized I was willing to put differences aside and do something cool for Borderlands fans with my friends at Gearbox.
I ultimately offered to do it for “free” in exchange for past royalties owed plus an apology for something I’ve never spoken about publicly until now: Randy physically assaulted me in the lobby of the Marriott Marquis at GDC 2017.
Personally, I think Randy’s been on tilt the last few years. He's not the victim he portrays himself to be. I even blocked him a couple years ago for stalking me on social media. Enough is enough.
It's nice not feeling the need to spot any sleight of hand these days or wonder if the card was chosen or forced. I'm happy to be free from the half-truths and full-on deceptions. And thankful to no longer hear people referred to as "muggles" like a con-man refers to a "mark".
As an aside, seems a bit conspicuous that he chimed in on my salary but didn't mention anything about the $12M of revenue he siphoned away from the employee royalty pool.
FYI - GBX employees are asked to take lower salaries with the promise of royalty shares.
2K says they won't give a statement regarding an ongoing lawsuit but if the allegation is false then it sure seems a lot easier to just deny it since that's the only reason they're mentioned.
The whole thing stinks.
https://threader.app/thread/1125565281261297664
https://twitter.com/davideddings/status/1125565281261297664

Glad to hear @GearboxOfficial is taking the claim "very seriously" as I'm eager to cooperate with whatever independent firm Gearbox/2K chooses for the ongoing investigation into Randy's misdeeds (which should be fairly easy to conclude).
For the record, Gearbox HR was informed of the assault the morning of Monday March 6, 2017. Randy fired me the next day.
https://twitter.com/davideddings/status/1126198610637537280

*SNIP*
In November 2016, Pitchford belatedly informed Callender that Randy had privately reached a “side-deal” with Take 2 Interactive/ZK Games, the Publisher of Gearbox’s Borderlands franchise. This deal—Which Pitchford insisted upon concealing—afforded Randy Pitchford a personal, secretive “Executive Bonus” of $12,000,000 to be paid directly to a Pitchford entity called “Pitchford Entertainment Media & Magic, LLC.”
Because Pitchford agreed to have his private “bonuses” counted as advances upon the royalties owed to Gearbox employees, those employees—and their families—won’t receive any of their accrued royalty or “profit” shares until their work repays Randy’s bonuses to the Take-Two Interactive/ZK Games.
This is a particularly tragic exploitation, because these millions are being syphoned to Randy Pitchford’s personal accounts instead of funding the development of Borderlands. It bears repeating: While Randy Pitchford accuses others of breaching their duties to Gearbox in order to show them the door, Gearbox personnel are having their royalties burdened and theirbelts tightened by Randy Pitchford himself.
Source:
https://www.scribd.com/document/397272204/Gearbox-lawsuit#fullscreen&from_embed (Wade Callender lawsuit)
https://jamesbellpc.com/professionals/ (law firm involved)

Update: Gearbox has responded to our request for comment. It continues to refrain from commenting on the $12 million accusation, a reference to a lawsuit from January, which is an 'ongoing investigation'. It has responded to the physical assault allegation with this statement: "Gearbox takes any and all claims of this nature very seriously and we will abstain from commenting on the allegations Dave is making because it is a personnel matter. We appreciate David’s contributions to the Borderlands franchise and have continued to assert we would welcome him back into the mix as the voice of Claptrap and other future opportunities."
Original story: Former Claptrap voice actor David Eddings has accused Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford of physical assault, following a week of controversy regarding his absence in the forthcoming Borderlands 3.

elvislaw
The company is down the street from me in Frisco Texas. I have heard people, or more often people’s significant others, complain on Facebook and social media and the answer to why they don’t leave is often about not wanting to move. There aren’t a lot of game companies here. There are a hell of a lot of tech jobs as the city is growing incredibly fast in that area, but many of the developers don’t want to leave their industry. Now all of that is completely anecdotal of course.

Jump back to quoted post25 Apr 2019, 16:48 PMEsxile

Epic says it will stop store exclusives if Steam offers a better cut

https://twitter.com/DuvalMagic/status/1124094984326488064
@DuvalMagic
You may be right. I am hyper sensitive to insinuations of me being misleading. I sufferred a lot from false claims about me from A:CM and my error was not immediately engaging and debunking false stories and claims. I don’t want to make that mistake again.

https://twitter.com/DuvalMagic/status/1124344684187242497
@Jed05
Good to know. Thanks for the reply.
When will we get the Aliens Colonial Marines remaster?
@DuvalMagic
I would love that, but that game was a work-for-hire for Sega and they have authority on all such decisions. Given that they cancelled the Wii U version, I have doubts they will ever feel motivated to further support the game.

Epic's determination to score exclusives for its game store now includes buying well-known studios. The company has acquired Rocket League creator Psyonix for an unspecified amount, and will bring the vehicular soccer game to the Epic Games Store by late in 2019. You can likely guess what's happening next, though -- Epic is expected to halt sales of Rocket League on Steam. You should still have access if you already own the game, but newcomers will have no choice but to turn to Epic's portal.

@EpicGames
We're excited to welcome @PsyonixStudios to the Epic Games family!
https://twitter.com/EpicGames/status/1123674304602832896

Jump back to quoted post30 Apr 2019, 12:31 PMnigo

An interesting comment from Mittens on reddit

"As we go forward, if we wanted to do Company of Heroes 3 in 2190 we could," Duffy continued, "because we know what we want to do to make it feel like a Company of Heroes game."

Later, Duffy added: "We wanted to take the element of WWII out of the creative vision and focus for the game moving forward. It is setting-agnostic. Company of Heroes doesn't have to be a World War II game. You can set it in modern times in Fallujah, you could set it in the past."

Jump back to quoted post29 Apr 2019, 07:59 AMTiger Baron

@Sturmtigercobra can you do me a favor and see if you can dig up any other information concerning the planned Company of Heroes Italian front expansion?

https://www.pcgamer.com/the-making-of-company-of-heroes-design-prototypes-and-the-donkeyschreck/
*SNIP*
PCG: We've also seen some early concept art for an Italy expansion that never came to pass, what's the story there?

QD: That came down to a decision to do another campaign or Company of Heroes Online. So that was that point.

Ian: Yeah so we had two initiatives at the team level. We needed to pick a lane at that point and there was so much momentum building around the buzz of free-to-play in the East and it moving West and trying to be the first AAA title to make the successful conversion, so we parked Italy for the interim and focused on China and eventually Korea, and finally we came back to North America but yeah, that’s the story behind Italy.

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2016/09/22/making-of-company-of-heroes/
*SNIP*
It wasn’t until preparing for this interview that I realised a third expansion had also been in the works, after Opposing Fronts and Tales of Valor. It would have been set around Italy, shining a spotlight on a less explored side of the war. Unfortunately, it was never finished. It was pitted against Relic’s other project, Company of Heroes Online in a sort of Highlander-style duel, and it lost. Company of Heroes Online was eventually cancelled as well.

“It was in early development, and right about that time the free-to-play buzzword started to gain momentum,” Wilson says. “So we started up Company of Heroes Online internally as well. So we had these two parallel competing priorities within the franchise, and at one point we made a decision that for the sake of quality and sanity we needed to pick a lane and go for it, and we ended up shelving the Italy stuff and pushing ahead with Company of Heroes Online.”

That may have not been the end of an Italy expansion, however. At the very least, Duffy continues to see it as fertile ground.

“I think it’s often viewed as a bit of a sideshow. Churchill said it was the soft underbelly and proved to be nothing but an incredible slog of challenge. Personally it’s really interesting because the Canadian army played such a big role in Italy. You don’t hear as much about it. The Normandy campaign took the attention away. So there’s a whole area in there that’s little covered. There are lots of spots in the war where important things happened but don’t get attention.“

https://www.gamewatcher.com/interviews/company-of-heroes-2-interview/11290
Strategy Informer: Interesting that you put a lot of emphasis on the Eastern Front being the ‘lost’ front, as I’d argue there are other ones that are more ‘lost’ – from Dunkirk and Africa to even the Italy campaign. Did they not draw you as much as Russia’s struggle?

Quinn Duffy: I think part of it is the scale and the scope we were interested in. Africa kind of ends in 1942, so you don’t really get the full run of World War 2 and the technology changes (ED: Also of note, the Italian Campaign was solely in 1943). I mean I find all the history fascinating, but when we talk about the ‘forgotten’ front it’s mainly for a western or North American audience who don’t have the expose. They don’t take History like you guys do in school, so for them it is really a mystery, and all they know about WW2 is what they’ve seen in Saving Private Ryan or Band of Brothers for instance.

I mean our audience tends to be more engaged in the historical elements, and our fans are calling for the Eastern Front. It was the number one choice for expansion packs. We just couldn’t do it justice, we couldn’t get it to a point where we had the technology to do it right. We wanted to go big with the sequel… but we’ve got a brand new creative vision for the game that can encompass anywhere and anytime.

https://www.gamewatcher.com/interviews/company-of-heroes-2-the-british-forces-interview/12276
GameWatcher: With these WW2 strategy games we’re fairly familiar with the main armies, the Americans, British, Germans and so on, but they often don’t explore the wider war. Like, the British had Indian troopers, soldiers from across the Commonwealth fighting for them. Is that something you’d like to explore in the future, a more global cast?

Quinn Duffy: I think we’re primarily focused on the European front, but we’ve stated on a number of occasions that we like the idea of this game as a kind of WW2 platform, we’re invested heavily in mod tools and that kind of thing. So we’re continuing to roll out new abilities to mod the game, and I think at some point having a group of players or a clan take up those challenges, of modding in a far Eastern army, or the Italians, that kind of thing, that’s something we’d be excited to support.

GameWatcher: You released the singleplayer-focused Ardennes expansion late last year, which was a great way to expand the game for SP fans and give them a chance to play with the American faction. Is that something you’re looking to continue, perhaps with the new British army?

Quinn Duffy: I think it’s a little bit dependant on what the market dictates, if there’s interest we’ll pursue it. I think at this point we’re going to support the mod tools and those kinds of initiatives, and we’ll see what players are interested in.

New Content (UGC)
Although we plan to continue releasing new in-game content in future updates, we will now be leveraging UGC such as vehicle skins and maps to help offer new gameplay experiences to the community. We hope that advances to COH2’s modding tools will also take place in the coming months, allowing additional forms of content to be created by the community as well - however this is still to be confirmed.