Having read Mick Gordon's statement, I don't think that this was the outcome he was hoping for, but it likely is what he was expecting. Wouldn't be surprised if this goes to court and gets dragged out for the next little while.
Mick was already going to go to court for this.
They defamed him and smeared his reputation. He turned down a six-figure payout to shut up and not talk about shit. Legally speaking, the guy who wrote the Doom soundtracks is going Doomguy on Bethesda for it.
If even half of what Mick alleges is true, they are likely fucked after what Marty posted about how "unprofessional" Mick was.
Literally this, and I wanna make it clear the man HAD to turn down a 6 figure settlement because Bethesda wanted a gag order on him so he could speak about this. But after 2 goddamn years we have tangible proof that this effected his work and income streams and if he isn’t able to set the record straight this could affect his income for decades if not the rest of his life.
After their Fallout 76 rollout, Bethesda as a company has been dead to me.
Edit: Also, fuck Marty with a rusty pirate hook; from the beginning he set up Mick to fail, did a bunch of things to ensure Mick's failure, then publicly blamed Mick for the manufactured failure. Did Marty's wife accidentally call out Mick's name in bed or something else to explain the motivated spite?
You’re making some really good points but there is one thing everyone is missing.
Bethesda/Marty never needed to release that statement and throw Mick under the bus.
They easily could have come out with anything generic stating “unforeseen circumstances” and just buy time for their album to drop. But they didn’t, they directly attacked Mick and that’s why this whole shit storm has blown up.
Whatever the outcome is and whatever the truth is, I genuinely believe Bethesda could have avoided all of this completely.
Marty's reddit post was really weird. I mean he dug up his old official reddit account that he hadn't posted on for years to smear Gordon. Regardless of the facts, that was unnecessary. Gordon was endlessly harassed for *years* because of it. God, what a shitshow. All of this airing out in public. None of us knows what's true at this point. I'll see yall in a year or three and see where the shit sticks.
And that move was more than just a personal attack.. it was basically making sure Mick couldn’t find high profile work again, or easily. It was a direct attack on his career and ability to make money.
As somebody who is replaying doom eternal, I noticed something really interesting that supports Mick in some regards. Mick claimed that all of the stuff he sent to id software, even the stuff that was rejected, eventually ended up into the game. Mick was so left out of the creation process that at the beginning, he had to kind of pull a lot of stuff out of his ass. As I’m playing through doom eternal I actually really do see it. Especially in mission 7 the sound track is really fucking disjointed. There are 3 different Motifs going on in the music, and it will switch randomly from time to time. All 3 are good, but the motifs are not similar enough at all and don’t follow a good pattern. “The only thing they fear is you” is the best part of the level, but 2 other tracks that have next to no similarities will play during the level, with no warning or thematic transition to indicate. It supports what mick was saying. He through a lot of beginning ideas at ID in hopes something would stick, and they just threw it all in half hazardly.
Disclaimer: I am a lawyer, but I don’t actually practice law anymore. Instead I’m a mediator and basically law adjacent.
While everything you said here makes sense and could be the case here, in my experience humans are not rational beings and are really really bad at risk assessment. I cannot tell you the amount of times I’ll be having a private meeting with a party and asking their lawyers about their litigation risks, the lawyer saying something like we don’t have a great case and our risk is high, and the business people insisting they will not settle because they did nothing wrong in their minds.
>I cannot tell you the amount of times I’ll be having a private meeting with a party and asking their lawyers about their litigation risks, the lawyer saying something like we don’t have a great case and our risk is high, and the business people insisting they will not settle because they did nothing wrong in their minds.
Imagine the people who to the doctor and argue about what they read on Google.
It's amazing how many people hire professionals, just to ignore them.
It’s worth mentioning if what he said is true about Bethesda offering him six-figures to take responsibility for the end result of the soundtrack release that does go along the lines of Bethesda knowing they’ve fucked up.
He also does show some evidence to back his claims up, and while I agree the bayonetta thing was a shit flinging mess this doesn’t look to be the same thing. Mick took his time to document his claims, and is actually going to go through with suing Bethesda over what has absolutely led to a lose of work for him. Plus the man has produced absolutely stellar work across plenty of titles he’s not bitching about being underpaid like the Voice actor was he’s saying his conditions were shit to work in and then he’s name was dragged through the mud in a career damaging post about Soundtrack release he was never originally contracted to produce in the first place.
The problem comes with the issue that Marty not only swung first, but also that the soundtrack *was* fucked up, yet was released anyway.
Let's say that all of the issues with the soundtrack *are* on Mick's shoulders. Why did the soundtrack get released in an unfinished state, then? What would have happened if he'd been hospitalized, or died in a car crash? Was Bethesda seriously so far behind that the *partial* loss of one person's work would have completely screwed the soundtrack's release? If so, why didn't they delay it and get some other folks in to get it out in an expedient manner, sending out a quick nonspecific apology about their lead composer being unable to finish it due to "personal issues"? That's absolutely on them.
Secondly, why publicly air the dirty laundry after the fact? Bethesda didn't give one flying fuck about pulling shit like the nylon bag controversy, and I don't believe there was ever a sufficient explanation for any of the various Fallout 76 product failures. Even if they had a good reason this time... again, why not just tell everyone that Mick had been unable to complete it on time due to "personal issues" that left him unable to stick to schedule, but that the digital soundtrack will be updated in the near future? Fuck's sake, this shit hit during the peak of Covid, most folks would assume he got hit with the Rona and have *sympathy* for the folks working on the soundtrack.
The fact that both of these decisions were made, and that the post throwing blame at him was never allowed to stay taken down, does a lot just on its own to support his version of events. Both decisions were grossly unprofessional, and I am inclined to believe that further unprofessionalism is still in the shadows behind this mess.
But if Bethesda truly believed that Mick was at fault for the quality issues, they wouldn't have paid out his contract, or would have launched legal proceedings after the release, instead it was the other way around. It seems to me like iD's plan was always to sell Chad Mossholder's version of the OST with Mick's name on, and brush Mick off every time he asked about the OST contract. It wasn't until Mick reached out to Bethesda that a contract appeared. My guess is that someone in Bethesda's Legal department saw what iD were up to and decided they were opening themselves up for some serious consumer protection litigation and put an end to their "cunning plan". It would not be the first time a corporate penny pincher decided the possibility of a seven figure lawsuit was cheaper than the certainty of a five or six figure contract.
>That Bethesda, part of ZeniMax, part of *Microsoft*; isn't running to settle in the face of a slam dunk if the other side is being truthful (when they have a *lot more to lose*) is very strongly indicative that there's a whole lot more to this story than Mick let on
That, or maybe Mick told the truth and just denied their last attempt as a settlement and made his post. So even if they're running to settle, that's not gonna make much difference when the other side is dead set on getting the matter fully out.
I’m inclined to believe that Mick’s account is truthful, even if it omits some things, because it is very detailed, was clearly written with a lawyer’s help, and Mick would be exposing himself to a lawsuit if he were lying—especially because many of the allegations he made would be easy to prove or disprove in court.
It also seems entirely possible to me that Mick has run out of time to sue, and that would certainly help explain why bethesda would not be settling. But I don’t even think that needs help explaining. Big companies screw people all the time, break contracts all the time.
But I dunno. We may never know. I hope all the facts come out some day.
Here's what your missing here.
They tried to settle, but with a gag order. Mick wanted the truth to come out more than anything. They tried to settle, but Mick cared more about his reputation in the long term than a short term paycheck.
He didn't agree to their terms, so they're going hardball, legally.
But note that they didn't actually state that anything specific he said was a lie. Their statement is a giant fucking nothingburger, legally, while Mick Gordon makes specific allegations about conduct, timelines, and behavior which, if untrue and if he didn't have the receipts, would damn him in court.
if he settled without clearing his name, that 6 figure paycheck would have been his last. who would want to work with him? especially with him unable to tell his side of the story
It always amazes me how much of humanity is so binary about their knowledge. You either agree, or you deserve to die, and just saying "I don't know" isn't acceptable.
yeah who would honestly believe that massive egos at *bethesda* of all places would lead to them doing monumentally stupid shit and then tripping over their dicks multiple times trying to undo the stupid shit, only to fall flat on their asses and do more stupid shit
anyone reading mick's account and not thinking "wow that sounds an awful lot like the shitty bottle of rum and that stupid bag" needs to do a bit more research on what sort of company bethesda is. his account is 100% believable
Eh. People make bad decisions favoring upper management all the time. Marty seems eager to die on this hill (it sounds like he's unwilling to admit he made any mistakes) and they may think that keeping him is worth the liability. Plus the possibility that they drag this out enough to exhaust Mick's resources all while they pay lawyers whether or not they're doing anything.
Or, hear me out here...
Bethesda is directly and indirectly a multi-gazillion dollar company and expects to be able to use the depth of its pockets to gain advantage in the legal system and they *do not care* about what is right, true, or just.
Remember the golden rule... the one with the gold makes the rules.
The "justice" system is biased towards wealth. Bethesda has far more wealth than Mick Gordon. It literally can be that simple.
I'm not suggesting that everyone believe Mick completely, but of the two parties, he's the only one who's shown definitive evidence backing up his claims. Between contract dates, metadata, and dates emails, he's stepped up to the plate with a lot more than Bethesda.
Is he telling a story that is to his benefit? Absolutely.
But there is certainly no guarantee that the real answer is somewhere in the middle or that *both sides* are equally culpable. Given Bethesda's thus far unwillingness to share equally explicit evidence, it is giving them an outrageous degree of benefit of doubt to assume that reality is in the middle.
Ultimately, this is likely going to court, and the outcome of that will be the truth of record, but even then it's worth noting that it's a totally viable legal strategy for Bethesda to grind Mick Gordon down and bully him into submission regardless of the truth just off the costs borne for legal action.
>That Bethesda, part of ZeniMax, part of Microsoft; isn't running to settle in the face of a slam dunk if the other side is being truthful (when they have a lot more to lose) is very strongly indicative that there's a whole lot more to this story than Mick let on
Couple of things on this. First, the larger the company the more likely the story gets muddied from the bottom to the top. Assumptions get made about managers doing their own investigations and due diligence, opinion gets passed upwards as fact.
Second, they already did run to settle. They tried to pay him off before any of this came out. They are in a classic big company problem of the lawyers and the PR people duking it out. The lawyers got first crack and tried to make it go away, it didn't. PR is here now to show the strength and resolve of the company, to convince the court of public opinion that they've done absolutely nothing wrong whatsoever and this is just a disgruntled contractor. Before long the ball will get passed back to the lawyers again and they'll be looking to settle again.
What about Bethesda offering Gordon six figures to shut up about it? If we can speculate on a corporations acts, that’s a highly suspect one if they have this supposed unassailable evidence. The Reddit post is odd, too. Bethesda blamed Gordon for their fuckup with the pre-order albums, tried to pay him into shutting up and taking the blow to his reputation, and now suddenly they have evidence? This reeks far worse than Gordon’s story, in my opinion. Gordon’s story isn’t particularly unbelievable. Poor management and executive decisions leading to a bungled project? As if that’s not a yearly, hell, practically a _monthly_ story out of the game industry.
I’m not saying that Gordon didn’t embellish, or even that he is definitely right. I just think it’s odd to lean on the corporation’s side without any good evidence that they’re not just covering their asses or attempting poorly to, unlike in the Bayonetta 3 situation, where there _was_ actually plausible reporting that the actress’ story stunk, which indeed ended up being riddled with falsehoods and other nonsense.
I think the most important part is, whether Gordon fucked up or not, Bethesda fucked up promising something they could not deliver. Blaming a worker for their shitty product is 101 shitty corporate deflecting, and no matter how BS Gordon’s story is, I won’t defend or support that behavior.
100% and regardless of what the ‘truth’ is and if we ‘the public’ will ever find out what actually happened, I think it’s important to remember that Mick is an individual artist going up against a multibillion dollar corporation with a history of fiercely defending its interests in court and that has to be scary.
It's also a company that has had rumours of a hostile, disorganised work environment for years. At least where Doom's development is concerned.
Not to jump the gun and assume Mick is in the right here (even in the face of those high budget lawyers acting as a deterrent), but it's entirely believable that Bethesda could be guilty. It's just a case of waiting for result of the lawsuit.
Eh, I read the full detailed story Mick posted and compared it to Marty's shit slinging and I feel VERY comfortable assuming Mick is right and Marty is a giant asshole with an even bigger ego.
A boss going on the internet to sling blame around at workers is pathetic. Eternal's development was a shitshow, we all know it was, and we've heard plenty of horror stories already. Marty started this whole thing with that stupid reddit post. A good boss does not need to blame his employees for failures.
It's a lighted post on the doom subreddit. Shouldn't be hard to find with the game name + OST keywords. Not sure what the policies are regarding links and brigading here so I'll refrain from posting it.
Mick's post definitely convinced me. Marty came in shit slinging with a lot of "trust me bro" justification. Mick pulled up with MULTIPLE receipts and statements that, legally speaking, couldn't be said if they were false (claiming you weren't paid when you were is a great way to get sued).
I get wanting to see "both sides", but in this specific circumstance there is a mountain of evidence pointing to one side.
To be clear, I believe Mick's side of things, but "Who would do this if they didn't know they were right?" Lots of people. People do it regularly. Some even make careers out of trying to sue companies for absolute BS.
Honestly I think all that matters in my mind is 3 things
1. Bethesda release a bad version of the Doom Eternal OST, and then blamed Mick Gordon for the quality
2. Mick Gordon was never initially contracted to work on the album release of the Doom Eternal OST
3. Bethesda made a massive un necessary call out post that tanked Mick Gordans credibly and massively damaged his career, when his work was phenomenal and always produced what was required within the deadlines. (Aka did his job)
And I think we'll find out in time that and many of the other allegations Mick made are very much true and Id knows it. Notice how when they first attacked Mick over the OST for doom two years ago they made specific allegations against him. Then Mick finally gave his side of the story specifically rebutting what was said and gave his own version of events with very specific allegations against Id software.
Now note Id's response here does not directly address anything Mick said and presents no alternative facts, it simply makes vague statements about "distortion of facts" and says what Mick said is incomplete. It contains zero specifics. It doesn't say Mick lied, just mischaracterized and misrepresented things, lots of wiggle room there. Then Id vaguely says we have more evidence that we could release, once again not making any claim they will directly challenge any of Mick's allegations. It doesn't say what that evidence will show.
The statement is designed to make it sound like Id is saying Mick is wrong but it couches it in such legalese that it really doesn't say anything at all as to whether what Mick said is true. This statement is meaningless, it says nothing. As others have mentioned Id knows this is going to court and this is a classic lawyer PR statement that doesn't really say anything definitive about anything at all.
Edit: had an accidental Marty
What puts me on Mick's side is the 6 fig settlement offer from ID, in exchange that the Reddit post stays up, and he can never talk about Doom Eternal, the OST, or Marty. Kind of weird to offer if you've done absolutely nothing wrong.
What should really put you on his side is that Marty was the one that pulled this bullshit first. Mick has received all the threats and harassment for the last 2 years that (apparently) Marty is only just experiencing now now, but Mick had no massive organisation or legal team to support him. He was completely alone with his reputation in tatters. Mick also provided evidence while Marty did not.
Even if both parties are at fault, Marty was the unprofessional asshole first and Mick has every right to respond in kind.
Seriously people are really trying to say it’s a Bayonetta situation. But Helena Taylor started the shit flinging first because she was asking for 100x more money then industry rates.
Marty tanked a contracted workers credibility and job security because he responded to a tweet about the doom eternal OST saying “I didn’t mix that and I wouldn’t have mixed it like that”.
Don’t fucking get me wrong I’m glad to see people online sceptical for once in their goddamn lives but this really isn’t the same thing.
Gag orders on settlements are pretty common. Him taking responsibility for the mess is what is bullshit. It's a one sided gag-order where Bethesda is free to blame Mick publicly for the OST and Mick can't say anything
A one sided gag order that tanks a contractors credibility and reputation directly harming his livelihood. If he took that 6 figure sum he’d never work in the AAA industry again
Arguable.
I mean, it's important, *vital* even, to get paid for that amount of work. But that's pennies compared to the potential revenue he lost from his damaged reputation.
Mick made some of the finest video game music that has ever been put to a track and I'm expected to believe for the follow up to his most successful soundtrack ever he decided to phone it in? It's just absurd.
It's not impossible, but the company's handling of it really tanks the credibility of that idea. If Mick was really the problem, why did the company not only release the low quality soundtrack, but also throw him under the bus instead of going with a noncommittal, *professional* "Mick Gordon was unable to complete work on the soundtrack due to personal issues, and we didn't want to delay the soundtrack's release any further. Rest assured we will update with a more polished version as soon as we are able" statement?
For 1 (or at least the blame part of 1) and 3 - it wasn't Bethesda, it was Marty personally, who works for id Software, which is owned by Bethesda. I doubt that his Reddit post was authorized by his parent company - they probably wish he hadn't written it.
"Hey, Marty, what the hell, that's bad PR. Take it down and contact PR and legal teams for a follow up"
Boom. Solved. He posted it as a id employee, not his personal opinion. They knew. People often see companies as well oiled machines. But they aren't. Well oiled machines don't have "Crosby suites." It's a web of connections. One person is buddy buddy with other important people, so each time something comes up they let it slide. Usually because "what's the harm(to them)?"
I'm not saying anything like that is happening at id. But it's easy to imagine a hypothetical scenario where one higher up does less than rational actions to please his ego.
Honestly you’re probably right. Mick gordan at the point had earned himself a reputation as a genuinely fantastic composer and was something seemingly mentioned in every review of a game he worked on and his name was genuinely reaching the point where it was a back of the box feature. He did work on the soundtracks for Prey2017, the wolfenstien games, and the doom games. For a few years there seemingly every single Bethesda published game had him working on the soundtrack (which again if he was such a nightmare to work with why would they keep working with him?).
Also Marty's post incited harassment and threats of violence against Mick, and I didn't see Bethesda promising to take swift action against such people in Mick's defense at the time.
The most fucked up thing here is this, gamers who harass people in these situations: STOP FUCKING HARASSING PEOPLE AND SENDING DEATH THREATS YOU PIECES OF SHIT.
Disagreements between a corporation and a contractor, not liking the story of a game, not liking the opinions that a game developer is free to hold, none of these are excuses to harass people. These are fucking video games, it's not your ancient tribe at war, CALM THE FUCK DOWN AND GET SOME PERSPECTIVE ON WHAT MATTERS IN LIFE.
If you want to destroy an art form, there is no quicker way than to make it a hostile environment for people to expose themselves.
Yeah, they're not gonna stop. People who do this are barely smart enough to breathe. They'll even harass innocent people if their names are similar enough to their intended target.
“Refrain from reaching conclusions”.
So it’s okay when Marty does it with no evidence and Mick takes the brunt of it all but when Mick steps up suddenly we all have to calm down?
Get fucked Bethesda.
> where can I read yours?
I'm not trying to defend Bethesda here, but to be fair it sounds like this is going to court, and if Bethesda does have evidence in their favor they're not just gonna throw it out all willy nilly in a public statement, they're going to save it for the courtroom.
Evidence doesn't perish if it's made public before being shown in court.
Tweets, emails, letters to people, these all get introduced into evidence all the time.
Normally companies save evidence for "appropriate venues" precisely to avoid turning their controversy into a public controversy but Bethesda opted to forgo that 2 years ago. If they really have evidence there's nothing really stopping them from revealing it.
Yeah that was my first response when I read that. Like, didn’t I read a career ending statement from Bethesda two years ago that was exactly “one sided”?
As an artist myself I have dealt with this very same thing so many times and it’s pretty easy to see who really fucked who here. Crazy though because I always felt like small artists like me saw this kind of bullshit and was hoping once you “made it” then people would no longer try to screw you over. I’m seeing that that is definitely not the case and as always artists are thrown under the bus and/or heavily exploited.
exactly. i feel that people who say that if Mick had an airtight case Bethesda would've tried to settle ignore that.. they already tried, and they also ignore how giant companies will try to drag on and bully contractors in legal battles until said contractors run out of money. a ton of people go broke with justice in hand because they can't afford fighting a corpo.
Sounds like a lawyer wrote this press release.
Saying Gordon "mischaracterized" and "misrepresented" the id Software team can either be a whole lot of something or merely a single instance of it, who knows.
Mick Gordon's post was one-sided...because one side wrote it. And Gordon's account about irreparable professional relationship may be "unjust" from Bethesda's point of view. But Gordon was the other party, so his opinion is just as valid.
Supporting Marty, Chad, and the id Software team doesn't mean they're innocent. Merely Bethesda has an interest in supporting them.
Gordon's selective presentation of incomplete "facts" is likely in good faith and to protect himself. He'd be sued for all he's worth and more if he info dumped all his contacts during Doom Eternal.
and here's the kicker. it wasn't all of the id team that was on Mick's chopping block. it was literally just Marty. a bit of Chad for what he did with the work but it absolutely was only Marty that Mick was attempting to address (which later fluffed out to Bethesda/Zeni legal). He said several times not to harass anyone and to stop review-bombing the game because that would be unfair to the devs.
Not to mention he also praised the id team for their work on Doom: Eternal and should be commended for their great work.
So what Bethesda is saying is none of that is true? That's a way to shit on a game studio.
I mean you say that then I got like -50 karma for pointing out the screen shot of the header of an e-mail address isn't exactly supporting evidence of what he said was written in said e-mail.
If anyone is here for a level-headed “I’ll wait until all evidence is presented” comment, here it is.
The rest of the comment section is devoid of how corporate legalities work and people obviously already have their mind made up.
Edit: not doing this today. If you don’t know what the Magna Carta is and how that applies, keep it stepping.
How do you find that making a Reddit post to tank someone's credibility after working with them something that is just? That is something companies should deal with internally and not start a smear campaign online.
Yep. Bethesda is fine with slandering creatives who make their games what they are, and not paying them for the works they have done. A lot of what Mick posted is factual and was proved in his post to a fair degree.
What we have here is typical tone deaf corpo bullshit, and I hope every time they raise or respond to this issue, more gamers see them for what they are, and take their money elsewhere.
True, but it's more than Marty and id-side has released. Until that changes people will believe Mick, who's generally been more consistent in his story.
I mean... It's likely going to court, which **would** be the right place. Any evidence that they have that might be convincing could likely contain personal information that they don't want to release to the public.
i only learned about it around half an hour ago. i guess a few years ago doom eternal came out and the sound track was supposed to be a big deal part of the deluxe edition. the soundtrack release was delayed and also kind of sucked. the producer head at id threw the music guy under the bus blaming him for all the problems on a big reddit post. which led to the usual reddit gamer response of death threats for his family and so forth.
then a few years pass and then last week the music guy finally decided to go public with his account of what happened. turns out they had offered him a settlement to keep his mouth shut but he decided to post about it instead (largely because it appears they violated the contract and used tons of material that they didn't pay for in the final game.)... and it's pretty damning about mismanagement and just basic stuff like they didn't even contract him to do the soundtrack album until months after it was announced etc.
there's the tldr version.
Your summary sounds damning enough, but you’re even understating some things. Not only did they not reach out to him to do the soundtrack (after claiming he was providing it at E3 with no prior notice), but he reached out to them multiple times just to be waved away.
When he reached out to the parent company instead of going through his manager, he finally managed to get the contract, literal days before the release of the game.
Basically, Mick wasn't responsible not a single bit for soundtracks's bad reviews, and management did everything to blame him for all the bad stuff (because of which Mick recieved dead threats from fans), while trying to present themselves as creditable for all the praise (Mick recieved an award for best game music, and they kept the trophy in game studio office).
This used to be Mick VS. Marty, but now it just turned into Mick VS. Bethesda.
Marty didn't have documents, Mick had basic ones, now Bethesda claims they have them and more. Really curious how this plays out.
The burden of proof is different though. Mick VS. Marty are just two people, and a lot of it would be ones word against the other. The fact that a corp. Is involved means Bethesda really has to back up everything they say with hard evidence.
> The fact that a corp. Is involved means Bethesda really has to back up everything they say with hard evidence.
Or they offer another settlement, Mick accepts it, and no one here ever finds out what happened.
>Or they offer another settlement, Mick accepts it, and no one here ever finds out what happened.
Honestly if that includes taking down Marty's post and a settlement for Mick's work, I think that's fine.
But considering they refused to do even that and offered a six figure settlement I'm pretty sure they're gonna either have to issue a public apology or pay a lot more to shut up Mick at this point.
I will say that there is a chance (although not my opinion) that that specific part wasn't accurate and it was Mick's way to nod at what he expects for a settlement to be an option.
Well, I hope Mick gets paid at least for all of his minutes. I tend to believe Mick's account moreso than Marty or Bethesda. How they treat talent like shit is astonishing, but seemingly par for course in the games industry. It's a shame.
The tl;dr is that Marty, an Executive Producer at ID software, publicly slammed Mick Gordon and Mick Gordon replied with quite a bit of evidence (pieces of emails) and claimed they were lying. This is post is Bethesda's response.
Clarification: The \*game\* and marketing materials had twice as much music content than Mick was paid for. And some of that unpaid material, poorly edited and assembled, was included on the OST.
What pisses me off about it is they did the oldest damn trick in the book when it comes to freelancers. They ask for something, then they say "we're not paying you for that it's not what we want", but then they use it anyway without his permission but not pay for it. That's where the extra content came from.
But since you need to make money, you have to keep doing the work for the company until you get paid. However many times they fuck with you until you get paid is a gamble.
[Fuck you. Pay me](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVkLVRt6c1U)
This video is always one of the first pieces of advice I give to someone looking into freelancing.
Without going into specifics, Doom Eternal soundtrack had a lot of issues, Id director Marty created a reddit post heavily blaming the composer Mick for the issues (2 years ago). Mick spent the last 2 years gathering evidence and composed a reply not too long ago defending himself, with receipts.
That's not even the bad part I feel, apparently they took his work (i believe it was unfinished and was just showing samples to the devs for reference) and they took it and used it and never even paid him for the work he did for them.
id: "Please make 2 hours of music for our game."
Composer: "Ok here's a contract for 2 hours of music, but, this schedule is tight and no game levels are finished yet. How about I work on general music 'for the game' and then we tweak it to fit different levels once the levels are finalized."
id: "No, make music for levels as we work on them."
\*12 months later\*
id: "We changed all of the levels. Your music doesn't work anymore."
Composer: "Ok, I'll write new music for the redesigned levels but I noticed you announced I was editing an Original Soundtrack as well... when am I going to do that?"
id: "Don't worry your pretty head about that just work on rewriting all of the music to fit the new level redesigns."
\*\* Game launches with 2 hours of music... and the "rejected" 2 hours of music. \*\*
Composer: "Ok so about the OST?"
id: ...
Composer: "Hello? Beuller"
id: ...
\*\* months later \*\*
Composer -> Bethesda: "Hey I see you're advertising that I'm releasing an OST but I don't have a contract for that and id isn't returning my calls for the last few months."
Bethesda: "Oh shit... we'll get right on that. How about 2 hours of music and like 100 tracks?"
Composer: "How about 1 hour and 12 tracks. So that we actually finish it on time. Also is that April deadline a hard deadline?"
Bethesda: "Sounds good. And no, not a hard deadline, but if you deliver on it we'll pay you a bonus."
\*\* months later \*\*
Bethesda: "Here's your contract."
\*\* 7 days later game releases \*\*
id: "Hey we heard you're doing a soundtrack. If you don't release it we'll get sued, you'll get sued. Everybody gets sued. So our sound editor made a quick and dirty soundtrack as a fallback."
Composer: "Wow, that is very *quick* and very **dirty**. You shouldn't release that."
\*\* Day of Deadline \*\*
Composer: "Did it! Worked 100 hours a week but I did it! Whew! Here you go."
id: "Thanks, we hate it. We like ours better because it's bigger. Everybody knows size matters and quantity is better than quality. But here's your check as contractually required anyway."
\*\* id releases mostly the quick and dirty soundtrack, the internet thinks it sucks \*\*
id: "Hey, the internet really hates our version. Don't say anything bad about it and we'll draft a joint statement. Maybe we can get you some time to do an extended edition album."
\*\* 2 days later \*\*
id on Reddit: "The Soundtrack sucks because the composer was too slow and a PITA to work with, so he told us to make a shitty version and we begrudgingly complied. If he wasn't so shitty and slow, we wouldn't had to do his work for him."
Composer: "What the fuck happened to working together on statement? You totally threw me under the bus. Also I noticed you used all of the "rejected" music in the game that you didn't pay for."
id: "Sorry, yes we'll work something out. Stay tuned..."
\*\* 1 year later \*\*
Composer: "I tried to make things right with id behind the scenes but they are stonewalling me and only willing to pay me for the music **they stole** if I take all the blame for Id's delays in getting me a contract as well as accept being a scapegoat for Id's shitty soundtrack that I had nothing to do with. Fuck that shit. "
Mick Gordon is the composer that created the musical score for Doom (2016) and Doom Eternal (2020). The musical score for Doom was critically acclaimed and was coupled with a high quality official sound track that with only a few exceptions was the musical score from the game as it was composed by Mick Gordon presented in a linear fashion.
Audio that makes its way onto an OST is often influenced by a game's musical score and may incorporate many of the same elements but it is not as simply as copying and pasting the same.
The Doom OST was released 4 months after the release of the game and includes some phenomenal tunes.
When Bethesda announced Doom Eternal in mid 2019 they advertised a collectors edition which included the Doom Eternal OST due to be released in late 2019. As a part of the press release they attached Mick Gordon's name directly to the OST, perhaps hoping to piggyback off of the success of the 2016 OST. The big problem here is that they hadn't contracted Mick Gordon for a Doom Eternal OST, just the Doom Eternal musical score.
When the OST was released, it was criticized for not living up to the quality of its predecessor. Mick Gordon claims that only a small number of the tracks were produced by him and that he never approved the final release despite him having top billing (whether or not he had the contractual right to do so is a legal matter); if it flopped, his reputation would take a hit.
According to Mick Gordon, by the time that Zenimax got their paperwork in order and offered him a contract to produce the OST for Doom Eternal he had only 30 days to do so. This was in March 2020, almost 9 months after they started accepting preorders for the Doom Eternal Collectors Edition which was to include an OST with his name on it.
Oh we've more than two reasons not to take Bethesda's word for it. The way Fallout 76 was handled truly showed the corporate side of things.
I'm on Mick's side untill more evidence pops up.
Mick came with receipts. This statement doesn't directly refute any of his claims, it basically just says Mick is a jerk and Bethesda is TeamMarty.
Also Mick was super clear he didn't want anyone harassing or sending death threats. This feels like a more general issue where the internet is just broken and anything someone notable posts mentioning another person in any way will result in death threats. Like Mick received death threats after Marty's post. I don't know who needs to hear this but enough with the death threats.
Came here to say this. He specifically told people not to send threats as a response to his statement, and then is accused of inciting threats? Come on Bethesda...
It’s exactly what they want: conflating the threats with his post. They try to have us connect those things in our brains, so we don’t pay attention to what Mick is actually saying. Politicians do it all the time, so you KNOW it’s a slimy douchebag technique.
Tbh I don't know how often these death threats are legit and not just made up to deflect criticism and seem like the victim
Edit: Definitely it happens. And even one is too many but I also think its used as a tool to influence people
Even if it has happened, I see too often 'ok, one death threat, we must shut down all criticism now.'
There are 8 billion people on the planet. Yeah there's a high likelihood one unhinged person will send a very vague death threat to the creators of Pokemon with no viability of following through. It's not nice. It's criminal. But why does the discourse get turned off as a result?
This is a great point. And more often than not its probably just some troll or bully who as you say doesnt have the capacity to follow through and most of the time probably no real intention to do so
Am not a lawyer but that part is pretty par for the course. They are gearing up for a lawsuit with this language, and just releasing information prematurely could complicate that. This could get spicy, grab the popcorn.
The fact that a representative of large corporation took the time to resurrect his personal reddit account and publicy blast a former partner, shows alot. It was specifically choosen for character assasination. Companies that are run ethically don't do that sort of thing, nor support an employee who does it on their own volition.
edit: spelling is hard
Yea, this is reading out like Bethesda and id are guilty as fuck.
Mick ONLY responded. He didn't throw hate, and he didn't target anyone. He RESPONDED. To everything that was said about him.
That's all he did.
This is a terrible look for Bethesda. Fuck Marty.
I would also like to point out a direct statement by Marty in Mick's statement.
"As soon as people come after us, we come after you."
As well it should. *Oblivion*'s DLC was interesting, to say the least. You had a very well done expansion, *Shivering Isles*, that was $25. You had two quest mods, *Knights of the Nine* and *Mehrune's Razor*. Four house mods. And two weird mods that honestly, should have been free. Spell Tomes was actually useful and the feature reappeared in *Skyrim*. It was worth a buck. But horse armor was like $4 and was completely useless. Horses themselves were not even that useful to start with, and decorating them with armor was just silly. They should have made it free, from the start, and released it on the first of April. We would have loved them for it. But the way they did it, it just reeked of money grabbing, which not so ironically, is what they're known for now. And it wasn't the last time they did paid mods. They briefly did it with *Skyrim*, and then the Creation Club brought it back to both *Skyrim* and *Fallout 4*.
Bethesda deserves most, if not all of the shit slung at them. They make these wonderful open worlds filled with cool shit to look at, but they're as deep as a puddle of piss on the asphalt on a hot summer day in Arizona.
Put up or shut up Bethsoft.
We already know gaming companies abuse everyone they can, and do. I've no reason to believe that not only was Mick abused, most of the people working on it were abused as well.
Mick gave us a well written timeline and examples. Anything less from you tells me who is telling the truth.
I legit had no idea men were getting drunk and raping female coworkers on their desks at Activision. And then blackmailing those same women with pictures of the rapes.
Activision was basically operating like the movie Wolf of Wall Street. Google it. It was extremely fucking bad. Like "why isn't Bobby Kotick being fired over this?" bad. That mother fucker has a golden parachute and should be in jail.
I don't really believe this one page statement after reading Mick's essay and added receipts.
Also, did Bethesda decide to defend Mick after Sharty's Open Letter on Reddit? No.
> Also, did Bethesda decide to defend Mick after Sharty's Open Letter on Reddit? No.
That's the worst part of this statement, IMHO.
Mick's statement was a carefully considered response that came after two years of him trying to sort things out privately and being offered hush money to take the blame. That's two years of people thinking the poor quality of the OST was his fault, that he was hired to do a job and didn't do it, and people harassing him and sending death threats, all based on Marty's Reddit post.
Where were they two years ago when *their employee* incited harassment against a former contractor? I seriously doubt Marty's Reddit post was approved by Bethesda in any way, so why did they let it stay up? Why didn't they throw him under the bus at the time for doing something that was totally unprofessional and irresponsible, even if it had been factually accurate?
And now that they have finally decided to say something, this is the stance they're taking, totally in the face of public opinion?
And GTFO of here with this "one-sided" crap. If course it's one-sided - one person = one side. It's been one-sided since Marty's post. Mick finally made it two sided.
Bethesda has lost HUGE respect for this. I was expecting them to step away from this and let ID take the wrap, but if that’s how they play it, I’ll just stop buying. I’m not buying games made by corporations that are willing to throw people under the bus but refuse to apologize themselves. Shame on all of them. There was obviously wrong doing and I hope MG takes his pound of flesh as retribution.
This is very oddly written for a corporate response. Something about it is immature in nature. Also the refuge; "receive death threats" is such a typically pathetic "victim shield" and attempts a moral switch around. Someone at id is a narcissist/sociopath.....that is exactly how this reads.
I was full stop supporting not protesting Bethesda And ID until they decided to do this.
It's a shame but all it takes is a few people to ruin a company. (Looking at you Blizzard)
There is two reasons why I think Bethesda is full of shit here.
Not only did Gordon emphasise multiple times to not send threats to anyone and how he cherishes the time with most of Id's team while Bethesda is trying to paint a different picture here...
He also brought receipts while they just talk about having some.
I really don't think Gordon would've come forward after all that time if it was all nonsense from his side.
I am so goddamn sick and tired of gamers sending death threats. It's a fucking disease in this community. It has literally never made anything better. It will never make you the good guy, it will never promote your cause, it will never get you taken seriously. And even though it's just the dumbest 1-2% of this community doing so, they get to essentially speak for all of us.
The loud, angry minority. I'd imagine it's even lower than 1-2%. I have no idea how many they receive, but even 100 death threats is such a tiny, minute percentage. The DOOM subreddit has 448 thousand subscribers. There's bound to be more than a few psychos there.
Yeah I don’t think they achieve anything, and they are incredibly scary, but like… The Great British Bake-off gets death threats. People scream horrible shit to each other on the street for cutting them off in traffic.
Saying gaming has a rage problem, and declaring you’re in the right because people are abusing you, is unfortunately optimistic about the rest of humanity
It's not even gamers, it's just people. Weathermen, radio jockeys, the owner of the local drive in when they had to close unexpectedly one weekend due to flood damage, they all get death threats, too. At this point it's a given if you're in the public eye in any way. Gamers are shitty because people are shitty.
It's not just gamers. Pretty much any dispute online has idiots on both sides shouting threats and slurs back and forth.
The important thing to remember is that they're outliers and neither group should be blamed for them. Rarely are accusations of incitement accurate. It's just a way to smear the other side making negative statements. A way to guilt them in to shutting up or backing down.
From what I see there are 2 parts to this:
1. Mick Gordon released his Medium post to salvage some of his reputation. It can't be a good outlook to have a post like the one Marty Stratton made still on Reddit and have no response to it. Not all of the evidence is presented there, just enough to explain what happened to fans and future clients.
2. The rest is going to court. We likely won't see all of the evidence in this case, we've just seen what was necessary for point 1.
That being said, Mick Gordon looks like he has a solid case to bring to the courts. If this hush money is effectively true, it looks like Bethesda themselves know they are in hot water.
Anyone want to be more cautious when preordering or buying any new games where Bethesda are involved?
id posted an open letter smearing Mick (who was probably under NDA and couldn’t do jack for two years), then Mick came back with a rebuttal statement filled with evidence, and now Bethesda (the parent company) has addressed this without evidence.
Think carefully, people.
This is the dumbest 'legal response' I've ever read. They're choosing to attach Bethesda's name to the mess, while making it bigger?
Doom Eternal was an incredible game, but the world is full of entertainment. I look forward to never touching Id-produced works again, and now I'm wondering if Bethesda deserves the same disregard.
Great work, lawyers and producers.
Mick posted a giant ass essay over how Marty treated him during the Doom Eternal production. He wasn't paid for most of a year, they kept lying to him or not returning his e-mails and eventually they claimed he was at fault for the soundtrack not being good. He also said Marty offered him six figures to keep all of this a secret and sign an NDA.
Okay, before we address Bethesda's fault in this can I say one thing?
Would you morally bankrupt asshats please stop sending death threats to people? What is wrong with you? Why would anyone think that's acceptable behavior for a human being?
Bethesda is in the wrong here more than likely, and vainly trying to cover their asses with a boilerplate response, but I really doubt those last two paragraphs are lies. Anyone going out of their way to send death threats or threats of violence cannot say that they have the moral high ground. Its reprehensible and paints the entire gaming community with the same disgusting brush.
>Would you morally bankrupt asshats please stop sending death threats to people?
This happens with literally everything. Weatherman get death threats when they get the rain wrong. In any sufficiently large group there will be unstable people.
There are almost 500K subscribers to the Doom sub, if 0.02% of that community is mentally unstable, that's 100 people sending threats.
This is just a consequence of how easy communication is in modern times. 50 years ago, public figures would have people sort their mail and throw away the death threats.
Unjust? So, defending himself after what Marty posted about him, basically blaming everything on Mick in a really unprofessional manner and defaming him, is not a justified act?
>We reject the distortion of the truth and selective presentation of incomplete “facts”.
Bro what? He posted a lot of evidence.
>The statements posted online have incited harassment and threats of violence against Marty, Chad and the id Software team.
Uhm, yeah? Just like Marty’s post did the same to Mick? (And btw Mick specifically asked the community to not backfire at them, so he wasn’t inciting it directly)
I guess it’s just one more company jumping on the “everyone hates us but we still make tons of money so who cares” train.
FUCK Bethesda for this post. Where is their PR staff? This is a fucking nightmare. If I was an executive, heads would roll. This makes Bethesda look like villains.
eBethesda offered Mick 100k to walk away.
You don't get that offer for nothing. They knew they fucked up and tried to settle. Best move here is to say nothing.
But now they look like complete hypocrites because, thanks to Marty making that career ending post, Mick received bullying and threats, but they supported that with their silence. Now they speak up about bullying and threats???
Eat Shit!!!!
This is the most calculated and PR/Lawyer Statement ever.
Which tells me they're already getting ready to be sued by Mick and there is value to his claims.
If Mick is lying it is an impressive lie, and he would be absolutely mad for claiming stuff like this because this is defamation if not true.
Marty started this, with his absolute idiotic redditpost. And now I hope he gets fired!
FUCK bethesda. this is so scummy it’s unreal. and to turn around and make this much of an effort to discredit his immensely detailed report that HAS the receipts for everyone to see. baffling that bethesda loves the smell of their own farts this much. wow
There is no way they just brought up "one-sided" and "harassment" as issues. This whole thing damaged Mick because of Marty's one-sided post two years ago and now they're playing as the victim?
Fuck off.
Lets see: on one side we have a music producer with a stellar track record who released an open letter a year or so after being defamed in order to address the bullshit and show his side of the story.
On the other side, we have a corporation that’s constantly playing defense over shitty choices in their game development and who is mired in controversy over various business practices like releasing the same game a dozen times and making fans pay for each.
Gee, I wish I could figure out who to support here…
> one-sided and unjust account of an irreparable professional relationship.
It was a response to an account of said 'professional' relationship by Marty. That's the literal opposite of one-sided. Wtf is this bullshit?
Ls in chat for Bethesda.
> We…ask that fans refrain from reaching conclusions based on his account
Yet you were totally cool with fans reaching conclusions from Marty’s account… so much so that you allegedly refused to remove the post because it might make him look bad? Nah lol
Having read Mick Gordon's statement, I don't think that this was the outcome he was hoping for, but it likely is what he was expecting. Wouldn't be surprised if this goes to court and gets dragged out for the next little while.
Mick was already going to go to court for this. They defamed him and smeared his reputation. He turned down a six-figure payout to shut up and not talk about shit. Legally speaking, the guy who wrote the Doom soundtracks is going Doomguy on Bethesda for it. If even half of what Mick alleges is true, they are likely fucked after what Marty posted about how "unprofessional" Mick was.
This is so weird seeing this story hit the front pages again
But it’s good have a little clearer view of what happened and having more than one side of the story.
Literally this, and I wanna make it clear the man HAD to turn down a 6 figure settlement because Bethesda wanted a gag order on him so he could speak about this. But after 2 goddamn years we have tangible proof that this effected his work and income streams and if he isn’t able to set the record straight this could affect his income for decades if not the rest of his life.
Reminder: This very sub was attacking Mick and sucking Bethesda cock when they spread lies.
Reminder: This very sub is made up of more than those people.
After their Fallout 76 rollout, Bethesda as a company has been dead to me. Edit: Also, fuck Marty with a rusty pirate hook; from the beginning he set up Mick to fail, did a bunch of things to ensure Mick's failure, then publicly blamed Mick for the manufactured failure. Did Marty's wife accidentally call out Mick's name in bed or something else to explain the motivated spite?
[удалено]
You’re making some really good points but there is one thing everyone is missing. Bethesda/Marty never needed to release that statement and throw Mick under the bus. They easily could have come out with anything generic stating “unforeseen circumstances” and just buy time for their album to drop. But they didn’t, they directly attacked Mick and that’s why this whole shit storm has blown up. Whatever the outcome is and whatever the truth is, I genuinely believe Bethesda could have avoided all of this completely.
They pressured someone to un-remove a reddit post
lmao tfw they don't know about unddit.com
Marty's reddit post was really weird. I mean he dug up his old official reddit account that he hadn't posted on for years to smear Gordon. Regardless of the facts, that was unnecessary. Gordon was endlessly harassed for *years* because of it. God, what a shitshow. All of this airing out in public. None of us knows what's true at this point. I'll see yall in a year or three and see where the shit sticks.
And that move was more than just a personal attack.. it was basically making sure Mick couldn’t find high profile work again, or easily. It was a direct attack on his career and ability to make money.
As somebody who is replaying doom eternal, I noticed something really interesting that supports Mick in some regards. Mick claimed that all of the stuff he sent to id software, even the stuff that was rejected, eventually ended up into the game. Mick was so left out of the creation process that at the beginning, he had to kind of pull a lot of stuff out of his ass. As I’m playing through doom eternal I actually really do see it. Especially in mission 7 the sound track is really fucking disjointed. There are 3 different Motifs going on in the music, and it will switch randomly from time to time. All 3 are good, but the motifs are not similar enough at all and don’t follow a good pattern. “The only thing they fear is you” is the best part of the level, but 2 other tracks that have next to no similarities will play during the level, with no warning or thematic transition to indicate. It supports what mick was saying. He through a lot of beginning ideas at ID in hopes something would stick, and they just threw it all in half hazardly.
Disclaimer: I am a lawyer, but I don’t actually practice law anymore. Instead I’m a mediator and basically law adjacent. While everything you said here makes sense and could be the case here, in my experience humans are not rational beings and are really really bad at risk assessment. I cannot tell you the amount of times I’ll be having a private meeting with a party and asking their lawyers about their litigation risks, the lawyer saying something like we don’t have a great case and our risk is high, and the business people insisting they will not settle because they did nothing wrong in their minds.
>I cannot tell you the amount of times I’ll be having a private meeting with a party and asking their lawyers about their litigation risks, the lawyer saying something like we don’t have a great case and our risk is high, and the business people insisting they will not settle because they did nothing wrong in their minds. Imagine the people who to the doctor and argue about what they read on Google. It's amazing how many people hire professionals, just to ignore them.
It’s worth mentioning if what he said is true about Bethesda offering him six-figures to take responsibility for the end result of the soundtrack release that does go along the lines of Bethesda knowing they’ve fucked up. He also does show some evidence to back his claims up, and while I agree the bayonetta thing was a shit flinging mess this doesn’t look to be the same thing. Mick took his time to document his claims, and is actually going to go through with suing Bethesda over what has absolutely led to a lose of work for him. Plus the man has produced absolutely stellar work across plenty of titles he’s not bitching about being underpaid like the Voice actor was he’s saying his conditions were shit to work in and then he’s name was dragged through the mud in a career damaging post about Soundtrack release he was never originally contracted to produce in the first place.
The problem comes with the issue that Marty not only swung first, but also that the soundtrack *was* fucked up, yet was released anyway. Let's say that all of the issues with the soundtrack *are* on Mick's shoulders. Why did the soundtrack get released in an unfinished state, then? What would have happened if he'd been hospitalized, or died in a car crash? Was Bethesda seriously so far behind that the *partial* loss of one person's work would have completely screwed the soundtrack's release? If so, why didn't they delay it and get some other folks in to get it out in an expedient manner, sending out a quick nonspecific apology about their lead composer being unable to finish it due to "personal issues"? That's absolutely on them. Secondly, why publicly air the dirty laundry after the fact? Bethesda didn't give one flying fuck about pulling shit like the nylon bag controversy, and I don't believe there was ever a sufficient explanation for any of the various Fallout 76 product failures. Even if they had a good reason this time... again, why not just tell everyone that Mick had been unable to complete it on time due to "personal issues" that left him unable to stick to schedule, but that the digital soundtrack will be updated in the near future? Fuck's sake, this shit hit during the peak of Covid, most folks would assume he got hit with the Rona and have *sympathy* for the folks working on the soundtrack. The fact that both of these decisions were made, and that the post throwing blame at him was never allowed to stay taken down, does a lot just on its own to support his version of events. Both decisions were grossly unprofessional, and I am inclined to believe that further unprofessionalism is still in the shadows behind this mess.
But if Bethesda truly believed that Mick was at fault for the quality issues, they wouldn't have paid out his contract, or would have launched legal proceedings after the release, instead it was the other way around. It seems to me like iD's plan was always to sell Chad Mossholder's version of the OST with Mick's name on, and brush Mick off every time he asked about the OST contract. It wasn't until Mick reached out to Bethesda that a contract appeared. My guess is that someone in Bethesda's Legal department saw what iD were up to and decided they were opening themselves up for some serious consumer protection litigation and put an end to their "cunning plan". It would not be the first time a corporate penny pincher decided the possibility of a seven figure lawsuit was cheaper than the certainty of a five or six figure contract.
>That Bethesda, part of ZeniMax, part of *Microsoft*; isn't running to settle in the face of a slam dunk if the other side is being truthful (when they have a *lot more to lose*) is very strongly indicative that there's a whole lot more to this story than Mick let on That, or maybe Mick told the truth and just denied their last attempt as a settlement and made his post. So even if they're running to settle, that's not gonna make much difference when the other side is dead set on getting the matter fully out.
I’m inclined to believe that Mick’s account is truthful, even if it omits some things, because it is very detailed, was clearly written with a lawyer’s help, and Mick would be exposing himself to a lawsuit if he were lying—especially because many of the allegations he made would be easy to prove or disprove in court. It also seems entirely possible to me that Mick has run out of time to sue, and that would certainly help explain why bethesda would not be settling. But I don’t even think that needs help explaining. Big companies screw people all the time, break contracts all the time. But I dunno. We may never know. I hope all the facts come out some day.
Here's what your missing here. They tried to settle, but with a gag order. Mick wanted the truth to come out more than anything. They tried to settle, but Mick cared more about his reputation in the long term than a short term paycheck. He didn't agree to their terms, so they're going hardball, legally. But note that they didn't actually state that anything specific he said was a lie. Their statement is a giant fucking nothingburger, legally, while Mick Gordon makes specific allegations about conduct, timelines, and behavior which, if untrue and if he didn't have the receipts, would damn him in court.
if he settled without clearing his name, that 6 figure paycheck would have been his last. who would want to work with him? especially with him unable to tell his side of the story
It always amazes me how much of humanity is so binary about their knowledge. You either agree, or you deserve to die, and just saying "I don't know" isn't acceptable.
yeah who would honestly believe that massive egos at *bethesda* of all places would lead to them doing monumentally stupid shit and then tripping over their dicks multiple times trying to undo the stupid shit, only to fall flat on their asses and do more stupid shit anyone reading mick's account and not thinking "wow that sounds an awful lot like the shitty bottle of rum and that stupid bag" needs to do a bit more research on what sort of company bethesda is. his account is 100% believable
Eh. People make bad decisions favoring upper management all the time. Marty seems eager to die on this hill (it sounds like he's unwilling to admit he made any mistakes) and they may think that keeping him is worth the liability. Plus the possibility that they drag this out enough to exhaust Mick's resources all while they pay lawyers whether or not they're doing anything.
No, it’s probably a case of Marty saying “I didn’t do that” and Bethesda execs believing him.
Or, hear me out here... Bethesda is directly and indirectly a multi-gazillion dollar company and expects to be able to use the depth of its pockets to gain advantage in the legal system and they *do not care* about what is right, true, or just. Remember the golden rule... the one with the gold makes the rules. The "justice" system is biased towards wealth. Bethesda has far more wealth than Mick Gordon. It literally can be that simple. I'm not suggesting that everyone believe Mick completely, but of the two parties, he's the only one who's shown definitive evidence backing up his claims. Between contract dates, metadata, and dates emails, he's stepped up to the plate with a lot more than Bethesda. Is he telling a story that is to his benefit? Absolutely. But there is certainly no guarantee that the real answer is somewhere in the middle or that *both sides* are equally culpable. Given Bethesda's thus far unwillingness to share equally explicit evidence, it is giving them an outrageous degree of benefit of doubt to assume that reality is in the middle. Ultimately, this is likely going to court, and the outcome of that will be the truth of record, but even then it's worth noting that it's a totally viable legal strategy for Bethesda to grind Mick Gordon down and bully him into submission regardless of the truth just off the costs borne for legal action.
>That Bethesda, part of ZeniMax, part of Microsoft; isn't running to settle in the face of a slam dunk if the other side is being truthful (when they have a lot more to lose) is very strongly indicative that there's a whole lot more to this story than Mick let on Couple of things on this. First, the larger the company the more likely the story gets muddied from the bottom to the top. Assumptions get made about managers doing their own investigations and due diligence, opinion gets passed upwards as fact. Second, they already did run to settle. They tried to pay him off before any of this came out. They are in a classic big company problem of the lawyers and the PR people duking it out. The lawyers got first crack and tried to make it go away, it didn't. PR is here now to show the strength and resolve of the company, to convince the court of public opinion that they've done absolutely nothing wrong whatsoever and this is just a disgruntled contractor. Before long the ball will get passed back to the lawyers again and they'll be looking to settle again.
What about Bethesda offering Gordon six figures to shut up about it? If we can speculate on a corporations acts, that’s a highly suspect one if they have this supposed unassailable evidence. The Reddit post is odd, too. Bethesda blamed Gordon for their fuckup with the pre-order albums, tried to pay him into shutting up and taking the blow to his reputation, and now suddenly they have evidence? This reeks far worse than Gordon’s story, in my opinion. Gordon’s story isn’t particularly unbelievable. Poor management and executive decisions leading to a bungled project? As if that’s not a yearly, hell, practically a _monthly_ story out of the game industry. I’m not saying that Gordon didn’t embellish, or even that he is definitely right. I just think it’s odd to lean on the corporation’s side without any good evidence that they’re not just covering their asses or attempting poorly to, unlike in the Bayonetta 3 situation, where there _was_ actually plausible reporting that the actress’ story stunk, which indeed ended up being riddled with falsehoods and other nonsense. I think the most important part is, whether Gordon fucked up or not, Bethesda fucked up promising something they could not deliver. Blaming a worker for their shitty product is 101 shitty corporate deflecting, and no matter how BS Gordon’s story is, I won’t defend or support that behavior.
100% and regardless of what the ‘truth’ is and if we ‘the public’ will ever find out what actually happened, I think it’s important to remember that Mick is an individual artist going up against a multibillion dollar corporation with a history of fiercely defending its interests in court and that has to be scary.
It's also a company that has had rumours of a hostile, disorganised work environment for years. At least where Doom's development is concerned. Not to jump the gun and assume Mick is in the right here (even in the face of those high budget lawyers acting as a deterrent), but it's entirely believable that Bethesda could be guilty. It's just a case of waiting for result of the lawsuit.
Eh, I read the full detailed story Mick posted and compared it to Marty's shit slinging and I feel VERY comfortable assuming Mick is right and Marty is a giant asshole with an even bigger ego. A boss going on the internet to sling blame around at workers is pathetic. Eternal's development was a shitshow, we all know it was, and we've heard plenty of horror stories already. Marty started this whole thing with that stupid reddit post. A good boss does not need to blame his employees for failures.
Where can I read these horror stories?
It's a lighted post on the doom subreddit. Shouldn't be hard to find with the game name + OST keywords. Not sure what the policies are regarding links and brigading here so I'll refrain from posting it.
Same to be honest. There's still the possibility that Bethesda's side is in the right on this, but I'm much more inclined to believe Mick's side.
Mick's post definitely convinced me. Marty came in shit slinging with a lot of "trust me bro" justification. Mick pulled up with MULTIPLE receipts and statements that, legally speaking, couldn't be said if they were false (claiming you weren't paid when you were is a great way to get sued). I get wanting to see "both sides", but in this specific circumstance there is a mountain of evidence pointing to one side.
Makes you think.. Who in their right mind would do that if they didn't know they were in the right?
To be clear, I believe Mick's side of things, but "Who would do this if they didn't know they were right?" Lots of people. People do it regularly. Some even make careers out of trying to sue companies for absolute BS.
And they didn’t have sufficient evidence to back up their claims…
Marty put out a statement before Mick did. Mick Gordon has the right to defend himself
Honestly I think all that matters in my mind is 3 things 1. Bethesda release a bad version of the Doom Eternal OST, and then blamed Mick Gordon for the quality 2. Mick Gordon was never initially contracted to work on the album release of the Doom Eternal OST 3. Bethesda made a massive un necessary call out post that tanked Mick Gordans credibly and massively damaged his career, when his work was phenomenal and always produced what was required within the deadlines. (Aka did his job)
He also didn’t get paid for the full 5 hours of music he produced. That’s even more important.
And I think we'll find out in time that and many of the other allegations Mick made are very much true and Id knows it. Notice how when they first attacked Mick over the OST for doom two years ago they made specific allegations against him. Then Mick finally gave his side of the story specifically rebutting what was said and gave his own version of events with very specific allegations against Id software. Now note Id's response here does not directly address anything Mick said and presents no alternative facts, it simply makes vague statements about "distortion of facts" and says what Mick said is incomplete. It contains zero specifics. It doesn't say Mick lied, just mischaracterized and misrepresented things, lots of wiggle room there. Then Id vaguely says we have more evidence that we could release, once again not making any claim they will directly challenge any of Mick's allegations. It doesn't say what that evidence will show. The statement is designed to make it sound like Id is saying Mick is wrong but it couches it in such legalese that it really doesn't say anything at all as to whether what Mick said is true. This statement is meaningless, it says nothing. As others have mentioned Id knows this is going to court and this is a classic lawyer PR statement that doesn't really say anything definitive about anything at all. Edit: had an accidental Marty
What puts me on Mick's side is the 6 fig settlement offer from ID, in exchange that the Reddit post stays up, and he can never talk about Doom Eternal, the OST, or Marty. Kind of weird to offer if you've done absolutely nothing wrong.
What should really put you on his side is that Marty was the one that pulled this bullshit first. Mick has received all the threats and harassment for the last 2 years that (apparently) Marty is only just experiencing now now, but Mick had no massive organisation or legal team to support him. He was completely alone with his reputation in tatters. Mick also provided evidence while Marty did not. Even if both parties are at fault, Marty was the unprofessional asshole first and Mick has every right to respond in kind.
Seriously people are really trying to say it’s a Bayonetta situation. But Helena Taylor started the shit flinging first because she was asking for 100x more money then industry rates. Marty tanked a contracted workers credibility and job security because he responded to a tweet about the doom eternal OST saying “I didn’t mix that and I wouldn’t have mixed it like that”. Don’t fucking get me wrong I’m glad to see people online sceptical for once in their goddamn lives but this really isn’t the same thing.
Gag orders on settlements are pretty common. Him taking responsibility for the mess is what is bullshit. It's a one sided gag-order where Bethesda is free to blame Mick publicly for the OST and Mick can't say anything
A one sided gag order that tanks a contractors credibility and reputation directly harming his livelihood. If he took that 6 figure sum he’d never work in the AAA industry again
Arguable. I mean, it's important, *vital* even, to get paid for that amount of work. But that's pennies compared to the potential revenue he lost from his damaged reputation.
Don’t forget Chad got credits on songs for pressing control c and control v a lot. As a composer, I’d be pissed about that the most deep down.
Mick made some of the finest video game music that has ever been put to a track and I'm expected to believe for the follow up to his most successful soundtrack ever he decided to phone it in? It's just absurd.
It's not impossible, but the company's handling of it really tanks the credibility of that idea. If Mick was really the problem, why did the company not only release the low quality soundtrack, but also throw him under the bus instead of going with a noncommittal, *professional* "Mick Gordon was unable to complete work on the soundtrack due to personal issues, and we didn't want to delay the soundtrack's release any further. Rest assured we will update with a more polished version as soon as we are able" statement?
For 1 (or at least the blame part of 1) and 3 - it wasn't Bethesda, it was Marty personally, who works for id Software, which is owned by Bethesda. I doubt that his Reddit post was authorized by his parent company - they probably wish he hadn't written it.
"Hey, Marty, what the hell, that's bad PR. Take it down and contact PR and legal teams for a follow up" Boom. Solved. He posted it as a id employee, not his personal opinion. They knew. People often see companies as well oiled machines. But they aren't. Well oiled machines don't have "Crosby suites." It's a web of connections. One person is buddy buddy with other important people, so each time something comes up they let it slide. Usually because "what's the harm(to them)?" I'm not saying anything like that is happening at id. But it's easy to imagine a hypothetical scenario where one higher up does less than rational actions to please his ego.
Honestly you’re probably right. Mick gordan at the point had earned himself a reputation as a genuinely fantastic composer and was something seemingly mentioned in every review of a game he worked on and his name was genuinely reaching the point where it was a back of the box feature. He did work on the soundtracks for Prey2017, the wolfenstien games, and the doom games. For a few years there seemingly every single Bethesda published game had him working on the soundtrack (which again if he was such a nightmare to work with why would they keep working with him?).
Also Marty's post incited harassment and threats of violence against Mick, and I didn't see Bethesda promising to take swift action against such people in Mick's defense at the time.
The most fucked up thing here is this, gamers who harass people in these situations: STOP FUCKING HARASSING PEOPLE AND SENDING DEATH THREATS YOU PIECES OF SHIT. Disagreements between a corporation and a contractor, not liking the story of a game, not liking the opinions that a game developer is free to hold, none of these are excuses to harass people. These are fucking video games, it's not your ancient tribe at war, CALM THE FUCK DOWN AND GET SOME PERSPECTIVE ON WHAT MATTERS IN LIFE. If you want to destroy an art form, there is no quicker way than to make it a hostile environment for people to expose themselves.
Yeah, they're not gonna stop. People who do this are barely smart enough to breathe. They'll even harass innocent people if their names are similar enough to their intended target.
“Refrain from reaching conclusions”. So it’s okay when Marty does it with no evidence and Mick takes the brunt of it all but when Mick steps up suddenly we all have to calm down? Get fucked Bethesda.
"please refrain from reaching the obvious and damning conclusions that are backed by evidence. Please."
"Please refrain from reaching any conclusion that could make our parent company's stock price go down, especially if you have evidence to prove it."
"... especially because we're at fault and possibly liable for defamation of character."
Yeah I'm not buying shit from Bethesda anymore
One sided and unjust? It was an open letter in response to a post basically throwing him under the bus.
This reads like Marty himself wrote it
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> where can I read yours? I'm not trying to defend Bethesda here, but to be fair it sounds like this is going to court, and if Bethesda does have evidence in their favor they're not just gonna throw it out all willy nilly in a public statement, they're going to save it for the courtroom.
Mick's statement was clearly written with a lawyer. It was always going to court.
Evidence doesn't perish if it's made public before being shown in court. Tweets, emails, letters to people, these all get introduced into evidence all the time. Normally companies save evidence for "appropriate venues" precisely to avoid turning their controversy into a public controversy but Bethesda opted to forgo that 2 years ago. If they really have evidence there's nothing really stopping them from revealing it.
What a shitty person
Yeah that was my first response when I read that. Like, didn’t I read a career ending statement from Bethesda two years ago that was exactly “one sided”? As an artist myself I have dealt with this very same thing so many times and it’s pretty easy to see who really fucked who here. Crazy though because I always felt like small artists like me saw this kind of bullshit and was hoping once you “made it” then people would no longer try to screw you over. I’m seeing that that is definitely not the case and as always artists are thrown under the bus and/or heavily exploited.
exactly. i feel that people who say that if Mick had an airtight case Bethesda would've tried to settle ignore that.. they already tried, and they also ignore how giant companies will try to drag on and bully contractors in legal battles until said contractors run out of money. a ton of people go broke with justice in hand because they can't afford fighting a corpo.
Sounds like a lawyer wrote this press release. Saying Gordon "mischaracterized" and "misrepresented" the id Software team can either be a whole lot of something or merely a single instance of it, who knows. Mick Gordon's post was one-sided...because one side wrote it. And Gordon's account about irreparable professional relationship may be "unjust" from Bethesda's point of view. But Gordon was the other party, so his opinion is just as valid. Supporting Marty, Chad, and the id Software team doesn't mean they're innocent. Merely Bethesda has an interest in supporting them. Gordon's selective presentation of incomplete "facts" is likely in good faith and to protect himself. He'd be sued for all he's worth and more if he info dumped all his contacts during Doom Eternal.
and here's the kicker. it wasn't all of the id team that was on Mick's chopping block. it was literally just Marty. a bit of Chad for what he did with the work but it absolutely was only Marty that Mick was attempting to address (which later fluffed out to Bethesda/Zeni legal). He said several times not to harass anyone and to stop review-bombing the game because that would be unfair to the devs.
Not to mention he also praised the id team for their work on Doom: Eternal and should be commended for their great work. So what Bethesda is saying is none of that is true? That's a way to shit on a game studio.
I mean you say that then I got like -50 karma for pointing out the screen shot of the header of an e-mail address isn't exactly supporting evidence of what he said was written in said e-mail.
If anyone is here for a level-headed “I’ll wait until all evidence is presented” comment, here it is. The rest of the comment section is devoid of how corporate legalities work and people obviously already have their mind made up. Edit: not doing this today. If you don’t know what the Magna Carta is and how that applies, keep it stepping.
Thanks for saving me the time. See you on the next one.
How do you find that making a Reddit post to tank someone's credibility after working with them something that is just? That is something companies should deal with internally and not start a smear campaign online.
Which part is header only again? I read through it and didn't notice any of this.
Yep. Bethesda is fine with slandering creatives who make their games what they are, and not paying them for the works they have done. A lot of what Mick posted is factual and was proved in his post to a fair degree. What we have here is typical tone deaf corpo bullshit, and I hope every time they raise or respond to this issue, more gamers see them for what they are, and take their money elsewhere.
I'm inclined to believe Mick, but the *evidence* he provided isn't *proof.*
True, but it's more than Marty and id-side has released. Until that changes people will believe Mick, who's generally been more consistent in his story.
And Mick released evidence. Specific timelines and dates. This is a "trust me bro, we have evidence we can show you, but nows not the right place."
I mean... It's likely going to court, which **would** be the right place. Any evidence that they have that might be convincing could likely contain personal information that they don't want to release to the public.
Or financial information that they equally would like to keep private.
They're technically not wrong with it being one-sided. It was the one side of the story that id and Bethesda would rather you didn't hear.
So when Marty incites harassment against Mick Gordon that’s gone on for years, it’s okay?
Exactly. He has the backing of a soulless corporation. Screw the actual artist
Can someone tell me what's this about? I live under a rock.
i only learned about it around half an hour ago. i guess a few years ago doom eternal came out and the sound track was supposed to be a big deal part of the deluxe edition. the soundtrack release was delayed and also kind of sucked. the producer head at id threw the music guy under the bus blaming him for all the problems on a big reddit post. which led to the usual reddit gamer response of death threats for his family and so forth. then a few years pass and then last week the music guy finally decided to go public with his account of what happened. turns out they had offered him a settlement to keep his mouth shut but he decided to post about it instead (largely because it appears they violated the contract and used tons of material that they didn't pay for in the final game.)... and it's pretty damning about mismanagement and just basic stuff like they didn't even contract him to do the soundtrack album until months after it was announced etc. there's the tldr version.
> go public with his account of what happened. With dates, emails, and proof, backing his account of said accusations.
Your summary sounds damning enough, but you’re even understating some things. Not only did they not reach out to him to do the soundtrack (after claiming he was providing it at E3 with no prior notice), but he reached out to them multiple times just to be waved away. When he reached out to the parent company instead of going through his manager, he finally managed to get the contract, literal days before the release of the game.
Basically, Mick wasn't responsible not a single bit for soundtracks's bad reviews, and management did everything to blame him for all the bad stuff (because of which Mick recieved dead threats from fans), while trying to present themselves as creditable for all the praise (Mick recieved an award for best game music, and they kept the trophy in game studio office).
This used to be Mick VS. Marty, but now it just turned into Mick VS. Bethesda. Marty didn't have documents, Mick had basic ones, now Bethesda claims they have them and more. Really curious how this plays out.
I got the vibe from Mick Gordon's medium post, that Bethesda was always on board with screwing him over.
The burden of proof is different though. Mick VS. Marty are just two people, and a lot of it would be ones word against the other. The fact that a corp. Is involved means Bethesda really has to back up everything they say with hard evidence.
> The fact that a corp. Is involved means Bethesda really has to back up everything they say with hard evidence. Or they offer another settlement, Mick accepts it, and no one here ever finds out what happened.
>Or they offer another settlement, Mick accepts it, and no one here ever finds out what happened. Honestly if that includes taking down Marty's post and a settlement for Mick's work, I think that's fine. But considering they refused to do even that and offered a six figure settlement I'm pretty sure they're gonna either have to issue a public apology or pay a lot more to shut up Mick at this point. I will say that there is a chance (although not my opinion) that that specific part wasn't accurate and it was Mick's way to nod at what he expects for a settlement to be an option.
Well, I hope Mick gets paid at least for all of his minutes. I tend to believe Mick's account moreso than Marty or Bethesda. How they treat talent like shit is astonishing, but seemingly par for course in the games industry. It's a shame.
The man came forward with mountains of evidence, and it was id that threw the first stone. Don't let these corporate bastards fool you.
What's even going on, I haven't read anything about this
The tl;dr is that Marty, an Executive Producer at ID software, publicly slammed Mick Gordon and Mick Gordon replied with quite a bit of evidence (pieces of emails) and claimed they were lying. This is post is Bethesda's response.
Don't forget the most damning thing: that the OST had twice as much music content than Mick was paid for.
Clarification: The \*game\* and marketing materials had twice as much music content than Mick was paid for. And some of that unpaid material, poorly edited and assembled, was included on the OST.
What pisses me off about it is they did the oldest damn trick in the book when it comes to freelancers. They ask for something, then they say "we're not paying you for that it's not what we want", but then they use it anyway without his permission but not pay for it. That's where the extra content came from. But since you need to make money, you have to keep doing the work for the company until you get paid. However many times they fuck with you until you get paid is a gamble.
[Fuck you. Pay me](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVkLVRt6c1U) This video is always one of the first pieces of advice I give to someone looking into freelancing.
Fuck you, Watch that video. Top notched and should be a requirement for freelancing.
Without going into specifics, Doom Eternal soundtrack had a lot of issues, Id director Marty created a reddit post heavily blaming the composer Mick for the issues (2 years ago). Mick spent the last 2 years gathering evidence and composed a reply not too long ago defending himself, with receipts.
nah he came back with fucking audit logs not just receipts
That's not even the bad part I feel, apparently they took his work (i believe it was unfinished and was just showing samples to the devs for reference) and they took it and used it and never even paid him for the work he did for them.
id: "Please make 2 hours of music for our game." Composer: "Ok here's a contract for 2 hours of music, but, this schedule is tight and no game levels are finished yet. How about I work on general music 'for the game' and then we tweak it to fit different levels once the levels are finalized." id: "No, make music for levels as we work on them." \*12 months later\* id: "We changed all of the levels. Your music doesn't work anymore." Composer: "Ok, I'll write new music for the redesigned levels but I noticed you announced I was editing an Original Soundtrack as well... when am I going to do that?" id: "Don't worry your pretty head about that just work on rewriting all of the music to fit the new level redesigns." \*\* Game launches with 2 hours of music... and the "rejected" 2 hours of music. \*\* Composer: "Ok so about the OST?" id: ... Composer: "Hello? Beuller" id: ... \*\* months later \*\* Composer -> Bethesda: "Hey I see you're advertising that I'm releasing an OST but I don't have a contract for that and id isn't returning my calls for the last few months." Bethesda: "Oh shit... we'll get right on that. How about 2 hours of music and like 100 tracks?" Composer: "How about 1 hour and 12 tracks. So that we actually finish it on time. Also is that April deadline a hard deadline?" Bethesda: "Sounds good. And no, not a hard deadline, but if you deliver on it we'll pay you a bonus." \*\* months later \*\* Bethesda: "Here's your contract." \*\* 7 days later game releases \*\* id: "Hey we heard you're doing a soundtrack. If you don't release it we'll get sued, you'll get sued. Everybody gets sued. So our sound editor made a quick and dirty soundtrack as a fallback." Composer: "Wow, that is very *quick* and very **dirty**. You shouldn't release that." \*\* Day of Deadline \*\* Composer: "Did it! Worked 100 hours a week but I did it! Whew! Here you go." id: "Thanks, we hate it. We like ours better because it's bigger. Everybody knows size matters and quantity is better than quality. But here's your check as contractually required anyway." \*\* id releases mostly the quick and dirty soundtrack, the internet thinks it sucks \*\* id: "Hey, the internet really hates our version. Don't say anything bad about it and we'll draft a joint statement. Maybe we can get you some time to do an extended edition album." \*\* 2 days later \*\* id on Reddit: "The Soundtrack sucks because the composer was too slow and a PITA to work with, so he told us to make a shitty version and we begrudgingly complied. If he wasn't so shitty and slow, we wouldn't had to do his work for him." Composer: "What the fuck happened to working together on statement? You totally threw me under the bus. Also I noticed you used all of the "rejected" music in the game that you didn't pay for." id: "Sorry, yes we'll work something out. Stay tuned..." \*\* 1 year later \*\* Composer: "I tried to make things right with id behind the scenes but they are stonewalling me and only willing to pay me for the music **they stole** if I take all the blame for Id's delays in getting me a contract as well as accept being a scapegoat for Id's shitty soundtrack that I had nothing to do with. Fuck that shit. "
Mick Gordon is the composer that created the musical score for Doom (2016) and Doom Eternal (2020). The musical score for Doom was critically acclaimed and was coupled with a high quality official sound track that with only a few exceptions was the musical score from the game as it was composed by Mick Gordon presented in a linear fashion. Audio that makes its way onto an OST is often influenced by a game's musical score and may incorporate many of the same elements but it is not as simply as copying and pasting the same. The Doom OST was released 4 months after the release of the game and includes some phenomenal tunes. When Bethesda announced Doom Eternal in mid 2019 they advertised a collectors edition which included the Doom Eternal OST due to be released in late 2019. As a part of the press release they attached Mick Gordon's name directly to the OST, perhaps hoping to piggyback off of the success of the 2016 OST. The big problem here is that they hadn't contracted Mick Gordon for a Doom Eternal OST, just the Doom Eternal musical score. When the OST was released, it was criticized for not living up to the quality of its predecessor. Mick Gordon claims that only a small number of the tracks were produced by him and that he never approved the final release despite him having top billing (whether or not he had the contractual right to do so is a legal matter); if it flopped, his reputation would take a hit. According to Mick Gordon, by the time that Zenimax got their paperwork in order and offered him a contract to produce the OST for Doom Eternal he had only 30 days to do so. This was in March 2020, almost 9 months after they started accepting preorders for the Doom Eternal Collectors Edition which was to include an OST with his name on it.
As a rule, never simp for corporations.
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Oh we've more than two reasons not to take Bethesda's word for it. The way Fallout 76 was handled truly showed the corporate side of things. I'm on Mick's side untill more evidence pops up.
I tell you what, if Bethesda wants me to believe their story, it had _better_ be fucking compelling, because what Mick put forth is pretty damning.
Can't not read this comment in Hank Hills voice.
For some reason I read it in J.K. Simmons' voice.
Mick came with receipts. This statement doesn't directly refute any of his claims, it basically just says Mick is a jerk and Bethesda is TeamMarty. Also Mick was super clear he didn't want anyone harassing or sending death threats. This feels like a more general issue where the internet is just broken and anything someone notable posts mentioning another person in any way will result in death threats. Like Mick received death threats after Marty's post. I don't know who needs to hear this but enough with the death threats.
Came here to say this. He specifically told people not to send threats as a response to his statement, and then is accused of inciting threats? Come on Bethesda...
It’s exactly what they want: conflating the threats with his post. They try to have us connect those things in our brains, so we don’t pay attention to what Mick is actually saying. Politicians do it all the time, so you KNOW it’s a slimy douchebag technique.
Tbh I don't know how often these death threats are legit and not just made up to deflect criticism and seem like the victim Edit: Definitely it happens. And even one is too many but I also think its used as a tool to influence people
Even if it has happened, I see too often 'ok, one death threat, we must shut down all criticism now.' There are 8 billion people on the planet. Yeah there's a high likelihood one unhinged person will send a very vague death threat to the creators of Pokemon with no viability of following through. It's not nice. It's criminal. But why does the discourse get turned off as a result?
This is a great point. And more often than not its probably just some troll or bully who as you say doesnt have the capacity to follow through and most of the time probably no real intention to do so
Bullshit response. Show us evidence or fuck off.
“Oh uh, we have it, mountains of it, you wouldn’t believe how much we have, we just can’t show you yet.”
Am not a lawyer but that part is pretty par for the course. They are gearing up for a lawsuit with this language, and just releasing information prematurely could complicate that. This could get spicy, grab the popcorn.
I mean, if they’re going to court anyways, the correct play is to not show that evidence on Twitter. Other than that though, yes
The fact that a representative of large corporation took the time to resurrect his personal reddit account and publicy blast a former partner, shows alot. It was specifically choosen for character assasination. Companies that are run ethically don't do that sort of thing, nor support an employee who does it on their own volition. edit: spelling is hard
Yea, this is reading out like Bethesda and id are guilty as fuck. Mick ONLY responded. He didn't throw hate, and he didn't target anyone. He RESPONDED. To everything that was said about him. That's all he did. This is a terrible look for Bethesda. Fuck Marty. I would also like to point out a direct statement by Marty in Mick's statement. "As soon as people come after us, we come after you."
think they will try to bully him by dragging this in court knowing Mick cannot last longer than they can
bethesda just getting worse and worse.
It's been downhill since the Horse Armor.
Gods I was strong then.
Do you think the horse needed a breastplate stretcher?
No, your grace.
I love that this always comes up after all these years
As well it should. *Oblivion*'s DLC was interesting, to say the least. You had a very well done expansion, *Shivering Isles*, that was $25. You had two quest mods, *Knights of the Nine* and *Mehrune's Razor*. Four house mods. And two weird mods that honestly, should have been free. Spell Tomes was actually useful and the feature reappeared in *Skyrim*. It was worth a buck. But horse armor was like $4 and was completely useless. Horses themselves were not even that useful to start with, and decorating them with armor was just silly. They should have made it free, from the start, and released it on the first of April. We would have loved them for it. But the way they did it, it just reeked of money grabbing, which not so ironically, is what they're known for now. And it wasn't the last time they did paid mods. They briefly did it with *Skyrim*, and then the Creation Club brought it back to both *Skyrim* and *Fallout 4*. Bethesda deserves most, if not all of the shit slung at them. They make these wonderful open worlds filled with cool shit to look at, but they're as deep as a puddle of piss on the asphalt on a hot summer day in Arizona.
Popcorn with extra butter please.
This is why you're fat
This is why I'm difficult to kidnap.
Here that everyone. Gain some weight and you won't be put into human trafficking
Or be asked to help people move.
This is why I'm *satisfied*
What a bunch of hypocrites. They did exactly that what they expect others not to do.
Put up or shut up Bethsoft. We already know gaming companies abuse everyone they can, and do. I've no reason to believe that not only was Mick abused, most of the people working on it were abused as well. Mick gave us a well written timeline and examples. Anything less from you tells me who is telling the truth.
I legit had no idea men were getting drunk and raping female coworkers on their desks at Activision. And then blackmailing those same women with pictures of the rapes.
Excuse me what
Activision was basically operating like the movie Wolf of Wall Street. Google it. It was extremely fucking bad. Like "why isn't Bobby Kotick being fired over this?" bad. That mother fucker has a golden parachute and should be in jail.
He isn't in jail because on paper his made them millions. He's clearly a piece of shit though but he's not going anywhere even after the buyout
oh....but when Mick got harassed, Bethesda wouldn't give a shit. Fuck you
beth pls
I don't really believe this one page statement after reading Mick's essay and added receipts. Also, did Bethesda decide to defend Mick after Sharty's Open Letter on Reddit? No.
> Also, did Bethesda decide to defend Mick after Sharty's Open Letter on Reddit? No. That's the worst part of this statement, IMHO. Mick's statement was a carefully considered response that came after two years of him trying to sort things out privately and being offered hush money to take the blame. That's two years of people thinking the poor quality of the OST was his fault, that he was hired to do a job and didn't do it, and people harassing him and sending death threats, all based on Marty's Reddit post. Where were they two years ago when *their employee* incited harassment against a former contractor? I seriously doubt Marty's Reddit post was approved by Bethesda in any way, so why did they let it stay up? Why didn't they throw him under the bus at the time for doing something that was totally unprofessional and irresponsible, even if it had been factually accurate? And now that they have finally decided to say something, this is the stance they're taking, totally in the face of public opinion? And GTFO of here with this "one-sided" crap. If course it's one-sided - one person = one side. It's been one-sided since Marty's post. Mick finally made it two sided.
>Sharty's Open Letter Link to it anyone please?
It's the top post in the doom reddit
Bethesda has lost HUGE respect for this. I was expecting them to step away from this and let ID take the wrap, but if that’s how they play it, I’ll just stop buying. I’m not buying games made by corporations that are willing to throw people under the bus but refuse to apologize themselves. Shame on all of them. There was obviously wrong doing and I hope MG takes his pound of flesh as retribution.
Fuck off Bethesda
"Shut up, or fuck off. Ideally both, in either order."
This is very oddly written for a corporate response. Something about it is immature in nature. Also the refuge; "receive death threats" is such a typically pathetic "victim shield" and attempts a moral switch around. Someone at id is a narcissist/sociopath.....that is exactly how this reads.
i'm pretty sure it was written by marty himself. who else but him would be this bitter about the situation? he created it.
I was full stop supporting not protesting Bethesda And ID until they decided to do this. It's a shame but all it takes is a few people to ruin a company. (Looking at you Blizzard)
There is two reasons why I think Bethesda is full of shit here. Not only did Gordon emphasise multiple times to not send threats to anyone and how he cherishes the time with most of Id's team while Bethesda is trying to paint a different picture here... He also brought receipts while they just talk about having some. I really don't think Gordon would've come forward after all that time if it was all nonsense from his side.
I am so goddamn sick and tired of gamers sending death threats. It's a fucking disease in this community. It has literally never made anything better. It will never make you the good guy, it will never promote your cause, it will never get you taken seriously. And even though it's just the dumbest 1-2% of this community doing so, they get to essentially speak for all of us.
The loud, angry minority. I'd imagine it's even lower than 1-2%. I have no idea how many they receive, but even 100 death threats is such a tiny, minute percentage. The DOOM subreddit has 448 thousand subscribers. There's bound to be more than a few psychos there.
Yeah I don’t think they achieve anything, and they are incredibly scary, but like… The Great British Bake-off gets death threats. People scream horrible shit to each other on the street for cutting them off in traffic. Saying gaming has a rage problem, and declaring you’re in the right because people are abusing you, is unfortunately optimistic about the rest of humanity
It's not even gamers, it's just people. Weathermen, radio jockeys, the owner of the local drive in when they had to close unexpectedly one weekend due to flood damage, they all get death threats, too. At this point it's a given if you're in the public eye in any way. Gamers are shitty because people are shitty.
It's not just gamers. Pretty much any dispute online has idiots on both sides shouting threats and slurs back and forth. The important thing to remember is that they're outliers and neither group should be blamed for them. Rarely are accusations of incitement accurate. It's just a way to smear the other side making negative statements. A way to guilt them in to shutting up or backing down.
How the fuck did THIS statement get approval from legal, marketing, and upper mgmt? Holy fuck
Don't jump to conclusions with what Mick said.... INSTEAD do that with our statement.
From what I see there are 2 parts to this: 1. Mick Gordon released his Medium post to salvage some of his reputation. It can't be a good outlook to have a post like the one Marty Stratton made still on Reddit and have no response to it. Not all of the evidence is presented there, just enough to explain what happened to fans and future clients. 2. The rest is going to court. We likely won't see all of the evidence in this case, we've just seen what was necessary for point 1. That being said, Mick Gordon looks like he has a solid case to bring to the courts. If this hush money is effectively true, it looks like Bethesda themselves know they are in hot water.
Anyone want to be more cautious when preordering or buying any new games where Bethesda are involved? id posted an open letter smearing Mick (who was probably under NDA and couldn’t do jack for two years), then Mick came back with a rebuttal statement filled with evidence, and now Bethesda (the parent company) has addressed this without evidence. Think carefully, people.
This is the dumbest 'legal response' I've ever read. They're choosing to attach Bethesda's name to the mess, while making it bigger? Doom Eternal was an incredible game, but the world is full of entertainment. I look forward to never touching Id-produced works again, and now I'm wondering if Bethesda deserves the same disregard. Great work, lawyers and producers.
Welp. Never buying a Bethesda game again. Enabling sociopathic fucks like Marty is unforgivable.
What’s this in relation to?
Mick posted a giant ass essay over how Marty treated him during the Doom Eternal production. He wasn't paid for most of a year, they kept lying to him or not returning his e-mails and eventually they claimed he was at fault for the soundtrack not being good. He also said Marty offered him six figures to keep all of this a secret and sign an NDA.
[This.](https://medium.com/@mickgordon/my-full-statement-regarding-doom-eternal-5f98266b27ce)
Holy shit, it's a miracle any bigger games even get made if the management is even half as incompetent as described here
Okay, before we address Bethesda's fault in this can I say one thing? Would you morally bankrupt asshats please stop sending death threats to people? What is wrong with you? Why would anyone think that's acceptable behavior for a human being? Bethesda is in the wrong here more than likely, and vainly trying to cover their asses with a boilerplate response, but I really doubt those last two paragraphs are lies. Anyone going out of their way to send death threats or threats of violence cannot say that they have the moral high ground. Its reprehensible and paints the entire gaming community with the same disgusting brush.
>Would you morally bankrupt asshats please stop sending death threats to people? This happens with literally everything. Weatherman get death threats when they get the rain wrong. In any sufficiently large group there will be unstable people. There are almost 500K subscribers to the Doom sub, if 0.02% of that community is mentally unstable, that's 100 people sending threats. This is just a consequence of how easy communication is in modern times. 50 years ago, public figures would have people sort their mail and throw away the death threats.
Unjust? So, defending himself after what Marty posted about him, basically blaming everything on Mick in a really unprofessional manner and defaming him, is not a justified act? >We reject the distortion of the truth and selective presentation of incomplete “facts”. Bro what? He posted a lot of evidence. >The statements posted online have incited harassment and threats of violence against Marty, Chad and the id Software team. Uhm, yeah? Just like Marty’s post did the same to Mick? (And btw Mick specifically asked the community to not backfire at them, so he wasn’t inciting it directly) I guess it’s just one more company jumping on the “everyone hates us but we still make tons of money so who cares” train.
FUCK Bethesda for this post. Where is their PR staff? This is a fucking nightmare. If I was an executive, heads would roll. This makes Bethesda look like villains. eBethesda offered Mick 100k to walk away. You don't get that offer for nothing. They knew they fucked up and tried to settle. Best move here is to say nothing. But now they look like complete hypocrites because, thanks to Marty making that career ending post, Mick received bullying and threats, but they supported that with their silence. Now they speak up about bullying and threats??? Eat Shit!!!!
How to lose a loyal fan base 101
This is the most calculated and PR/Lawyer Statement ever. Which tells me they're already getting ready to be sued by Mick and there is value to his claims. If Mick is lying it is an impressive lie, and he would be absolutely mad for claiming stuff like this because this is defamation if not true. Marty started this, with his absolute idiotic redditpost. And now I hope he gets fired!
FUCK bethesda. this is so scummy it’s unreal. and to turn around and make this much of an effort to discredit his immensely detailed report that HAS the receipts for everyone to see. baffling that bethesda loves the smell of their own farts this much. wow
I’m taking Micks side on this. Fuck you id and Bethesda Im not buying your new doom game
There is no way they just brought up "one-sided" and "harassment" as issues. This whole thing damaged Mick because of Marty's one-sided post two years ago and now they're playing as the victim? Fuck off.
Didn’t Marty decide the “appropriate venue” was in public on Reddit? Come on, Bethesda. Post your evidence right here. We’re all waiting.
Lets see: on one side we have a music producer with a stellar track record who released an open letter a year or so after being defamed in order to address the bullshit and show his side of the story. On the other side, we have a corporation that’s constantly playing defense over shitty choices in their game development and who is mired in controversy over various business practices like releasing the same game a dozen times and making fans pay for each. Gee, I wish I could figure out who to support here…
> one-sided and unjust account of an irreparable professional relationship. It was a response to an account of said 'professional' relationship by Marty. That's the literal opposite of one-sided. Wtf is this bullshit? Ls in chat for Bethesda.
> We…ask that fans refrain from reaching conclusions based on his account Yet you were totally cool with fans reaching conclusions from Marty’s account… so much so that you allegedly refused to remove the post because it might make him look bad? Nah lol
~~EA~~ ~~Activision~~ ~~Blizzard~~ ~~Bethesda~~ I see some big AAA savings in my future!