Kixeye Fires Four in Response to Racism Allegations

Kixeye’s CEO has taken action against alleged racists after being alerted to the problem via Twitter.

When one Kixeye contractor currently known only as Qu33riousity encountered racist attitudes in the workplace, Qu33riousity used a blog post to vent. The blog has since been taken down, but before that happened Kixeye CEO Will Harbin, following up on a Twitter alert, saw it. As a result, four Kixeye employees – three workers and a manager – are now out of a job.

Harbin describes the four as “bad apples” who “weren’t living up to the standards that the rest of us are set.” While Harbin was unwilling to comment directly on the allegations made by Qu33riousity, saying only that “not everything in the blog post was accurate,” Harbin did say that he was embarrassed by the behaviour of the four terminated employees. The remainder of the affected team are undergoing harassment training to ensure that this doesn’t happen again, and Harbin is taking company-wide steps to eradicate any other problems.

Qu33riousity’s rage, according to Kotaku, was sparked by a manager’s comments that Qu33riousity was dressing too “thuggish.” When Qu33riousity responded with allegations of racism and homophobia, the reply was “you’re too sensitive” and “we don’t even tolerate people bringing up concerns of racism here.” The original Kotaku report suggested that Qu33riousity intended to take legal action as a result of this incident.

Kixeye, the Facebook game maker formerly known as Casual Collective, is probably most widely known – outside of San Francisco, anyway – for this recruitment video. Their lineup includes Battle Pirates, Backyard Monsters and Desktop Defender, among others.

Source: Will Harbin