Every self-respecting fan of the RPG genre should instantly recognize Chris Avellone. He's the veteran designer and writer of defunct Black Isle Studios and also former chief creative officer of Obsidian Entertainment, involved in the development of many beloved games such as
Fallout 2, Planescape: Torment, Icewind Dale, the second and ultimately cancelled
Fallout 3 (known as
Van Buren),
Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords, Neverwinter Nights 2, Alpha Protocol, Fallout: New Vegas, Wasteland 2, Pillars of Eternity, the
Prey reboot
, Divinity: Original Sin II, and many, many more.
A quick look at Avellone's résumé should help you realize that he's an incredibly talented guy who knows the ins and outs of the RPG genre like no other. He left Obsidian Entertainment for the first time in 2010 only to return five years later. Shortly after the launch of
Pillars of Eternity he left Obsidian once again. Avellone recently took to the controversial forum
RPG Codex to talk about his last departure.
"
I didn’t get anything when I left Obsidian [three years ago]," Avellone explained. "
There were no share payouts, no equity, and this was in addition to the other logistical problems around the departure – the sudden cancellation of my health insurance, problems with my 401K, errors in Obsidian’s accounting, and several existing independent contracts they refused to uphold."
Avellone later accused his former company that they used his moment of weakness, family issues and the debts to "
make an attempt to leverage that into a far more confining separation agreement that would remove my right to work on RPGs, and my silence on all issues that could pertain to Obsidian or any other company they were involved with or the CEO had a % in (Fig, Zero Radius, Dark Rock Industries, etc.). This included an inability to critique games I’d worked on – much of my critiques on my own games tend to be blunt, and not being able to speak to them felt unnatural to me."
According to the
Fallout: New Vegas writer, Obsidian may sound like a ruthless and soulless company, but like they say "
one's point of view depends on the point where one sits" and Eric Fenstermaker, the lead narrative designer of
Pillars who's no longer an Obsidian Entertainment employee himself paints a different picture of the developer. He wrote to the editor of
RPG Codex to clarify some points.
"
Like I said, I'd have liked to just solve it between us but it was well too late for that," Fenstermaker stated to explain the way writing and editing for Obsidian’s crowdfunded
Pillars of Eternity worked. "
I didn't like that it escalated, but looking back, if I thought it was avoidable I was kidding myself. Just being willing to make cuts didn't solve the problem. It was too late. The physical work of cutting the dialogue down in the tool, refactoring all the scripting, and everything else meant that even with the companions brought down to proper length, their implementation time was still far beyond that of any other companions. There was time allocated to implement two companions who were written to spec in the first place, no more. Had to make a lot of sacrifices to the narrative schedule and pull a lot of overtime to get it done, and I was fixing Durance bugs long after all the other companions were set. It cost us up and down the game in terms of polish time at a vital stage."
"I would thank you to kindly never speak on my behalf. You do not speak for me. We are miles apart on our perspectives. Some of the events you've discussed here, my recollection differs greatly, and I don't support your accounts," Fenstermaker unambiguously and bluntly concluded.
His former colleague didn't wait too long and wrote yesterday that
"Feargus (Obsidian’s CEO) de-ownered me (which I didn’t have a choice in) and then told, “but don’t worry, we’ll still allow you to work on Tyranny for us,” and my response was, “that’s okay, you can work on it by yourself. Before this seems unusual, de-ownering was actually a common threat tossed around, so it wasn’t specific to me – if any owner raised objections to events going on, the response was often, “you don’t sound like you want to be an owner anymore” and never addressed the actual issues being brought up."
There has been no further statement from Obsidian Entertainment regarding the sensitive situation, but we're sure that the fallout of Avellone and Fenstermaker’s comments will grow even larger soon.