Microsoft has a reputation as an evil giant that will squish the little man at any given chance and stories like this one make it hard not to believe. Seems that MS has recently fired a former game tester for talking on recording with a press site about the issues that MS was having during the early launch of its Xbox 360 consoles. This is no secret to anyone that there were many quality problems with the launch consoles and MS tried hard to keep things under wraps, but this man decided to pull back the curtain a bit and tell some stories about his time at MS.
Delaware, a 29-year-old Seattle resident, expects to face civil charges from his former employer VMC (which tests games for Microsoft) and Microsoft as well. He will likely have to hire a lawyer. Microsoft spokesman David Dennis said the company does not talk about personnel issues.
Microsoft had him fired on Wednesday. Delaware worked as a game tester at Microsoft but was employed by the temp agency Excell Data. He reported directly to a Microsoft manager, who told him he was being let go because of the VentureBeat article.
We need more people like Robert Delaware who are willing to stand up and speak their minds and tellt he truth about what is going on behind the scenes. This to me is a bit of a witch hunt, a huge billion dollar company is hunting down the average Joe to silence him and send a msessage to anyone else getting ideas. Shame on MS for strong arming him after firing him.
What do you think?
I am 50/50 on it. An employer wants loyalty from its employees and perhaps has a contract that states such behavior to be punishable by termination. On the other hand, everyone knows about the flaws of the XBOX 360, it is well documented and has not impeded sales to a point where the console is no longer competitive so some tester barking about it is old news and of no consequence.
It’s like the FBI silencing civilians from a conspiracy…