Let's take a trip back through time. It's a mental journey, so get out of the DeLorean. Remember a man by the name of Adam Orth?
This past spring, long before Microsoft had even revealed the Xbox One (most were still calling it the Xbox 720, which should tell you something), there was a lot of talk that the company's new console would come saddled with an always online requirement, meaning that if you wanted to play, but didn't have your console hooked up online, you'd be S.O.L.
Maxis and EA's disastrous SimCity launch, the result of the same sort of requirement, was still fresh in everyone's mind, so gamers as a whole seemed unanimous in their opposition to an "always online" next-gen console. At the time, Adam Orth was Microsoft's Creative Director, and after having a regular "back and forth" in a very public forum, Orth's comments of "deal with it" over always online caught him the ire of the massive number of gamers opposed to it.
While Orth later claimed that he was trolling a solitary person, it caused a huge backlash against Orth, and even Microsoft, as many assumed Orth's coments were indicative of a policy to come for the company's next system. Microsoft even had to issue a statement in an attempt to quell the anger. It was rumored Orth was no longer with Microsoft just days after the commotion began, hard to confirm as Orth had already made his Twitter account private. The Internet being full of the sort of classless douchnozzles that enjoy hiding behind an anonymous avatar, it wasn't long before Orth and even his family received death threats.
It's been more than 7 months since the incident, but finally, Adam Orth came forward to speak about his experience at the GDC Next panel, "Mob Rules: The Destructive Power of Opinion and Online Community." He revealed during that panel that the amount of vitriol and venomous threats directed at Orth and his family from nameless online cowards with far too much time on their hands caused Orth to drop out of the public eye, and even pack up and relocate his family.
"My colleagues, friends and family urged me to do it, though, hoping that I could find closure and maybe I could get even a single person to see what someone endures when they becomes the target of internet hate," reported Polygon, present for the panel.
"When someone threatens you on the internet, it's very hard to take that seriously," he said. "Were any of these threats credible? Unlikely, but I wasn't going to put myself and my family at risk. Ultimately we had to leave town to feel safe. We had to completely rebuild our life and fortify our digital life as well as all of our financial accounts in order to protect ourselves and our assets. Many people have asked me 'Did you contact the authorities?' In the end I chose not to. It felt pointless. I mean, how do you report the entire internet?"
It's one thing to be critical, but it's another thing to threaten, no matter how rude and dismissive some of Orth's comments seemed to be, especially when he was far from the deciding factor for any of the policies of Microsoft (the always online policy, which, deserves mentioning that while it did turn out to be true, Microsoft would later go back on).
Obviously, threats were an extreme overreaction, but Orth understood the initial feelings of frustration many gamers felt by Orth's ambivalence his comments conveyed. "I exercised incredibly poor judgment expressing my personal opinion in a public forum about a volatile and divisive topic in the gaming community," he said. "I made it even worse by continuing that conversation sarcastically with a close friend. While the tone was natural and normal for us, the rest of the world heard and read something very different.
"It's easy now for me to see the anger, outrage and how controversial it was based on my professional position and the tone in which I delivered my opinion ... I survived. When something this bad happens to you, you have two choices: Curl up in the fetal position and become the victim, or face the truth, learn from your mistakes with humility and move forward."
