this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2023
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[–] Tapioca@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I posted this last time the trailer was posted. I am in the UK indie dev scene, and heard about this stuff before it went public ( at least some of it.)

https://www.eurogamer.net/two-women-accuse-cultist-simulator-developer-alexis-kennedy-of-exploitative-behaviour

Essentially an employee of Failbetter Olivia Wood, came out and admitted they'd been in a relationship with Kennedy that had been kept secret when hired. You can argue that this was a bad arrangement, but the trouble here is Kennedy held all the power and used this to his advantage. Kennedy then dumped Wood for another employee Lottie Bevan and lied about it to Failbetter; he was Lottie's Manager. He started becoming increasingly abusive to Wood. Threatening people in the studio who picked up on it while keeping others ( some people are fully remote) in the dark.

Other women in the industry spoke out about it including Emily Short, who at the time was a freelancer for Failbetter. Stopped working with them for a long while ( you can see why in her tweets) and then joined them more recently. https://twitter.com/emshort/status/1166807338336051208?lang=en

A FB employee linking receipts disputing AK's claims.: https://medium.com/@wastebooks/alexis-kennedy-71044efc0ecf

There's also the weirdass PC GamesN article Kennedy and Lottie Bevan the other FB employee ( and other Weather Factory employee) did about their relationship before this stuff came out. Even if you don't want to look through various rebuttals, I think it's really odd. https://www.pcgamesn.com/cultist-simulator/sunless-sea-lottie-bevan-alexis-kennedy-working-relationships

As has been said none of AK's legal threats went anywhere, and with current social media disintegrating it's a hard thing to follow. Obviously, make up your own mind with this. But it's more than a he/she said situation.