I keep thinking in a perfect world this dude would just take responsibility, apologize, and take an L. That is not happening and if it makes Pirate feel better I am sure Blizzard will take you back Activision is known for hiring scum so you’ll be welcomed with open arms. Sarcasm aside I’ve never seen someone go from beloved in the community to dirt so quickly. He had four major controversies back to back and while several did cover these I feel like some of the anger from one bled to another. First, World of Warcraft now there are reasons I don’t play this game anymore, but a large reason is players like Pirate Software. There are players who work together and make sure everyone is okay on a team, then there are players like Pirate, he insults people who just started playing and abandons team members to die. World of Warcrafts raids are team efforts if you need to run you need to make sure everyone can get out. Now he was playing as a Mage, a largely support role in any game, they are responsible for buffing team members and healing. Rather than admit he panicked and ran rather than help, he doubled down yelling his team said run and he was out of Mana (ignoring the fact everyone could see his inventory and seeing two items that would fix the issue). Could he save his team, probably not, but he could have tried, absolutely. Next, he decided to beef with Stop Killing Games. He misrepresented the initiative to the point people like MoistCritical/ Charlie, Asmongold, and others including myself had to step in. For the record, I believe laws can sometimes be adapted elsewhere so while SKG is mostly an EU and European thing right now who’s to say people in the US aren’t already paying attention to it. I won’t get into the initiative now as I wrote a whole artitcle about it already and for anyone who hasn’t signed that petition in the EU yet please sign and outside of Europe please spread word about it. Lastly, he decided to keep his code knowingly unoptimized. Code is meant to be simple and understandable. He makes mistakes, but the thing he needs to do he won’t. For a chapter based game most of which has their own code per chapter, Heartbound, I guess he felt the code was good enough for release and that is fine, but he needs to patch it with a more stable build or you know code it correctly from the start. Also he likely lied about creating games for Blizzard, now I’m not saying he didn’t work there, I am saying he likely only worked QA and small amounts or basic code. Even then with his father there we can’t really know if he was just handed the position or not. Code can’t be complicated and while the bare minimum looks good on stream any experienced coder or even someone like me who has never coded, but knows people who do will tell you spagetti only looks good on a plate, but if you are coding it prepare for pitfalls and pain.

Pirates biggest problem isn’t the internet hate he is getting, nor is it the near 100,000 followers he’s lost in the last few weeks. It isn’t even the lack of taking responsibility and actually understanding a situation before speaking. While all of those are attributing factors, his biggest problem is he is a child in his 30s. Think about it when criticized he doesn’t take it well and throws a huge tantrum banning the only people who still support him and try and help him, then refuses to take responsibility and runs to daddy’s money or company.