As someone who was let down by Jirard’s choice to double down and threaten his accusers, I actually don’t think he needs to be removed. If anything, the fact that his role in the game is to take donations becomes more of a snarky meta commentary. I get that Sabotage studio is probably really hurt by this given their close relationship with IndieLand, and they have every right to do whatever they want with their art, but experiencing the irony here should be preserved and available to the public.
Having kept up on the drama I’m sure Jirard was devastated by this. He’s built a brand on being a nice guy, but be it by malfeasance, or incompetence he screwed up royaly. Hope we get the full story and find out he and his family are just idiots, not criminals. Especially with it all steming from his mother’s illness.
The evidence does point to just pure incompetence but it’s hard to believe he didn’t know that none of the money had been sent over the past decade, especially since he claimed multiple times they spent it. If not him, someone in the charity must’ve stolen the money and lied to him. Guess we’ll wait and see.
So we don’t know the whole story, but he was removed from the game, anyway? Not cool.
Thierry can do whatever he wants with his game, but ending a long and profitable (both emotionally and financially, presumably) friendship simply because of unproven allegations seems like a very short-sighted, fear-driven move.
They did it to protect the brand or whatever, but actions like this harm the brand in my eyes. Shows they care more about public perception than truth and justice. I, for one, will be removing Sea of Stars from my wishlist because of this.
Unless Thierry comes out and says he knew all along about The Completionist, which is literally the only way to justify such a preemptive sanction, he has irreparably harmed his integrity, IMO.
That the Open Hand charity screwed up bad. Jirard’s character was a guy that took donations to complete charitable works. The real life charity took all the donations and held them for 10 years while telling everybody that their money was going directly to charities for research. They listed multiple charities that they work with that they had never worked with. These are indisputable facts and at the very least should be enough to justify this removal.
To add to that, it seems like they were at least procrastinating in their donations. They claimed that it was to find a charity that would use all the money donated exclusively for research but the charity they finally donated to allows that for any amount if you ask. The donation was made a month after being called out for not donating for 10 years.
Okay, yeah, that’s pretty bad. Thanks for expanding my understanding. I’d never actually heard any of these names other than Sea of Stars before this post, so I came in pretty blind.
Honestly, I was more airing my frustration with what seemed at first glance like a very similar situation to the whole Justin Roiland thing from earlier this year. He got kicked off his own shows based on what turned out to be false allegations, and never got so much as a public apology.
I’ll still wait to pass judgement until more is known, but I at least see that the content removal wasn’t purely done out of fear of public response.
A wild Justin Roiland truther has appeared.
So he’s an asshole. That’s pretty on-brand for him. Doesn’t make him guilty or deserving of getting hit with the cancel stick.
I don’t think I’ll ever understand you people who exist in this weird venn crossover of “This is America it’s their right to perv on teens/be a bigot/whatever other skeevy shit” and “You’re literally infringing on their freedom if you decide you don’t want to work with somebody, you should be forced to do business with them regardless of how terrible or toxic they are”
Making comments like that and worse to young teenage fans makes him look a lot like a predator. You should read some of the text exchanges where he’s encouraging girls who he’s been talking to for years and have just turned 18 to hang out and get drunk with him.
Its kinda funny to criticize someone for supposed preemptive action by yourself making a preemptive action.
Doesn’t apply to this situation, but I guess I get how that could be mildly humorous.
Fully applies here, because the legal documents that the charity has posted for the past decade are more than the ample amount of evidence to drop jirard like a hot stone.
Jirard claims the reason why he lied for a decade about donating the money instead of hoarding it like a dragon is sheer incompetence. Many people think that is a lie, and its actually a long con he was in on the while time.
But regardless of if he was actively evil or just horridly incompetent with the money of hundreds of thousands of trusting fans, both explanations are full reasons to cut contact with him on a business and personal level.
What company wants jirard the “10 year long charity fumbler” completionist as a partner? Who would intentionally advertise that they work with either the charity scammer or the guy who didnt realize his charity wasnt a charity for a decade?
So a completely rational business cuts ties with a bad business partner. And you respond by misreading an internet comment, and taking the game out of your wishlist.
Yeah, and if you look further down, you’ll see I was ignorant of that until another commenter informed me, then I changed my tune accordingly.
Regardless, there was nothing preemptive on my end. “Preemptive” means taking preventive action in anticipation of something possible in the future. I was reactive; I saw the content removal as morally wrong, and reacted with a small personal protest (which, granted, I didn’t edit out of my original comment, but have since rescinded). Nothing preemptive about it.
Semantics are fun!
Yes, and so was the removal of jirard from sea of stars. Reacting to the knowledge that jirard mishandled his charity. Thats why it was funny. Because you mislabeled what they did while doing the same thing they did.
Im sorry, I didnt think that part needed spelling out.
