Former Obsidian owner Chris Avellone didn’t hold back after discovering that Microsoft had just acquired Obsidian Entertainment in a blockbuster deal, beseeching the powerful tech company to gut the leadership that still worked there. Avellone famously fell out with Obsidian and publicly criticized the management roles afterward, suggesting that the company had only its profits in mind while behaving unprofessionally, even immediately cancelling Avellone’s health insurance after letting him go.
For Microsoft, the deal to acquire Obsidian Entertainment comes at a time when the future of the Xbox desperately needs some positive reinforcement. The Xbox One has been routinely outperformed by the PlayStation 4 at all junctures during this console generation, and the Nintendo Switch recently burst onto the scene with a huge library of first-party successes, allowing the console to leapfrog the Xbox One and join the PS4 at the top of the heap. The Xbox One has been criticized heavily for its lack of exciting first-party IPs, which is part of the reason the attempt to acquire Obsidian has been received so positively - at the very least, Microsoft now has an in-house development studio that is very good at producing memorable RPGs.
A quality product isn’t always worth the trouble, though, and that’s what Avellone has been preaching in his relentless assault on Obsidian Entertainment’s top brass. In a tweet published late last week, Avellone asked Xbox boss Phil Spencer to “hire the devs, fire the chaff at the top” with regards to Obsidian, suggesting that the management were liars who did not appreciate the talent they had working under them. Here’s a look at a few of Avellone’s tweets:
Clearly, the relationship between Avellone and Obsidian hasn’t improved since the last time the industry heard about it, when Avellone had a lengthy personal interview and comments Q&A back in May of this year to discuss all the ways in which he felt the studio had wronged him. Avellone highlighted gender inequality, refusal to uphold contracts, errors in accounting and finance, and more as reasons the company shouldn’t be worked with.
With all that said, however, Avellone has also been careful not to criticize Obsidian Entertainment as a whole, as he has remained committed to singing the praises of the development teams who work there. In fact, Avellone went on record during the tweet storm as being open to returning to the company should leadership changes be made, another sign of his respect for the rest of the company:
Unfortunately for Avellone, it seems unlikely that Microsoft didn’t conduct a thorough investigation and interview process of Obsidian Entertainment before the purchase was made, so the industry giant is probably fine with Obsidian’s leadership as is. That won’t stop Avellone from trying to improve a company he helped make famous while working on Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords and Fallout: New Vegas, though, and if there’s any significant fallout from Avellone once again digging up the dirt on the company’s management, we might see the famous developer end up at the studio he previously called home once more.
More: Fallout: New Vegas 2 Likely Won’t Ever Happen, Says Obsidian
Source: Chris Avellone/Twitter
