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Inside The Ghosting, Racism, And Exploitation At Game Publisher Nicalis

At E3 in June of 2015, the game designer David Crooks was hanging out across the street from the L.A. Convention Center when he met a man named Tyrone Rodriguez. Crooks needed support for the console versions of his quirky top-down dungeon crawler, Enter the Gungeon, and Rodriguez’s company...

kotaku.com

At E3 in June of 2015, the game designer David Crooks was hanging out across the street from the L.A. Convention Center when he met a man named Tyrone Rodriguez. Crooks needed support for the console versions of his quirky top-down dungeon crawler, Enter the Gungeon, and Rodriguez’s company, Nicalis, seemed willing to help out. In the parking lot where Devolver, Enter the Gungeon’s publisher, sets up tents and beer kegs every year, Crooks and Rodriguez started talking about how they might work together.

Crooks, Rodriguez, and Devolver marketing boss Nigel Lowrie struck a deal: Nicalis would handle the PlayStation 4 port for Enter the Gungeon when it came out the following year. Crooks and his team had Nicalis sign a non-disclosure agreement and gave them access to their source code for Enter the Gungeon, then went back to work on the game. But soon after that, Crooks and Lowrie both told Kotaku, Rodriguez stopped responding to their calls and emails. Days, weeks, and months went by without a word.


“There was some light correspondence about helping them to get it to compile, then we never heard anything else back regarding the arrangement,” Crooks told Kotaku. “I believe that Devolver prodded them a couple of times, but we never heard anything back. Due to the lack of communication, we were forced to move on, and found another partner to help us with the port.”

Ghosting stories like these are common when it comes to Nicalis, a game developer and publisher that has grown big in the independent scene thanks to smash hits like Cave Story and Binding of Isaac but also has cultivated a reputation for mistreating employees and outside developers. Nicalis, based in Orange County, California, employs a staff of around 20 and handles a number of ports, re-releases, and original games, usually developed with external partners. In recent years, fans have noticed some public scuffles between Nicalis and game developers, but the extent of Nicalis’s troubled history has not yet been revealed.

For this story, Kotaku spoke to four external developers who worked with Nicalis and seven former Nicalis employees, most of whom requested anonymity because they were afraid the company would retaliate against them. (Some of those employees left the company out of frustration; others were let go.) Some shared anecdotes about the company ignoring them for months on end. All described Nicalis’s founder and president Tyrone Rodriguez as a friendly but often difficult boss, prone to behavior that some called controlling and exploitative. Multiple former Nicalis employees said Rodriguez pressured them to drink heavily, made racist jokes in the workplace, and would oscillate between berating them and ignoring them. A few shared Skype logs of Rodriguez using racial and ableist slurs, racist jokes, and antisemitic comments during work conversations. (We’ve included some of those logs later in the piece.)

When contacted with interview requests by Kotaku, a Nicalis spokesperson sent over a broad statement and said the company would not comment further:

Developing and publishing games is a dream for the staff of nearly 20 that work at Nicalis, Inc. Some of our team have been with the company almost a decade and we work hard to create an environment where we treat our team members with respect. They are what make the company.
We do not condone abusive workplace environments or discrimination and have people from all walks of life. We hope for the continued success of our internal team and our external developers.

Regarding the companies under mutual NDA with Nicalis, Devolver (publisher of Enter the Gungeon) and The Game Bakers (developer of Furi), we can only comment that we do not have any signed publishing agreements with them and never have.

While reporting this story, we reached out to Edmund McMillen, the creator of Binding of Isaac, who has been working with Nicalis for console ports and remakes of his games since 2012. When informed of the specific allegations against Nicalis that Kotaku planned to report, McMillen said that Rodriguez “wasn’t ever my boss, he’s always just been a publisher of my work” and that he would be halting his plans to work with them on two future games.

“I won’t be moving forward with Nicalis when it comes to the port of The Legend of Bum-bo or any console versions of Mewgenics,” he said in an email. “[Binding of Isaac: Repentance] will still be releasing as originally planned, the team poured their heart and soul into this DLC and it’s very close to releasing.”

check the link for more.

 

[VertigoOA]

Where is the actual bad stuff????

Burn him and his family blah blah

 

[Codswallop_]

Where is the actual bad stuff????

Burn him and his family blah blah

Did you miss the part where he used ableist slurs? Ugh.

 

[DunDunDunpachi]

This is tabloid stuff. Not even worth discussion and critique.

 

[petran79]

If they laughed or pretended to laugh with his racist jokes, only to blame him afterwards, they are 1000 times worse

 

[Zannegan]

Where is the actual bad stuff????

Burn him and his family blah blah

If you can't find a reindeer...

 

[nush]

It seems indie developers are the worst.

 

[The Bloody-Nine]

God bless the ignore thread function.

 

[Abriael_GN]

I have never seen a "gaming journalist" putting so much effort into finding dirt on people (regardless of whether its actually relevant or tabloid-level nitpicks, of which this "article" is chock full) and so little into writing about games.

 

[Birdo]

Ugh, yikes, toxic, my sweet summer child.

 

[ClanOfNone]

Kotaku, what a shocker.

lmao, if you never had a signed contract what can you whine about. Think you had a verbal contract? Then take him to court and let a judge decide.
As far as the inappropriate workplace jokes, people need to get a thicker skin. Maybe I'm just so used to that stuff in the restaurant bizz, you hear stuff that would make a sailor blush.

 

[Petrae]

When Kotaku inevitably folds (not soon enough), Schreier has a future in tabloid reporting with The National Enquirer.

Par for the course for the shitstain that is “games journalism” these days— tangentially related to video games, but more about virtue signaling. What’s worse is that Kotaku shows that it still has sway (at least in the indie community) in that it affects publishing decisions through shaming.

It seems indie developers are the worst.

So. Much. This. The fucked-up “indie development community” is like a non-stop Jerry Springer show for the video game biz.

 

[Outrunner]

I got bashed on twitter for saying this was a bad article. I know Schreier has this fame of being a good investigation journalist but if all of his investigation pieces are like this one then he really is just another shitty gaming journalist.

There is no investigation whatsoever, he is just parroting what people who have grudges with Nicalis are saying. There is no attempt to verify if the allegations are true or not, there is no further investigation with people that actually struck successful deals with Nicalis or have positive experiences working there.

He accuses the publisher of ghosting for doing something that can most rationally be understood as a small team taking on more than what they can actually do. Screenshots of private conversations are used to try to prove Tyrone's racism, sexism and whatever -ism, when frankly it looks more like the kind of banter that you have with people that you are comfortable with.

Most of the things the r ex-employees are talking about are not even that serious, oh well your boss wanted to pay you some drinks and kinda pushed into drinking on a social event, nail him to a cross and burn him alive.

The most frustrating part is that Nicalis did screw some developers over but that doesn't get looked into, the sole purpose of the article is to be a hit piece on Tyrone and people are riding Schreier's dick for it.

Also Schreier should stop writing about this kind of stuff since his bias against corporations seems to blind him for how much of a poor job he is doing.

 

[Hudo]

If you want to read more, just wait for Schreier's next book ....

You know, Schreier is a decent investigative reporter (his other articles that are not investigative pieces are usually very badly researched and structured, though) but it really rubs me the wrong way that he uses that as content for his books. Maybe I'm a pussy about it and that's just the way it works but it really rubs me the wrong way, as if there's always the possibility that Schreier's investigations are done for monetary gain and not really to help people/point out issues that are worth talking about.

Or in other words, I can't take any of Schreier's reportings without reservations because he might be biased (towards shilling his books).

 

[Alexios]

Nicalis sucks for taking so long with 90s Super GP/90s Arcade Racer and apparently the original dev wanting nothing to do with them/it any more

His next game has been in playable early access for a while now so we can't pin it on him (and it's been so long since Nicalis took over anyway).

Everything seems to be smooth sailing before they get involved then things grind to a halt. It's been happening since Cave Story iirc.

Dunno about any of the drama but they certainly don't appear too competent and I wonder why indies still get involved with them.

Also Schreier should stop writing about this kind of stuff since his bias against corporations seems to blind him for how much of a poor job he is doing.

What bias, he's been shilling Epic Games (Store, they're not some indie underdog but billionaire owned and worth billions) hard and speaking ill of Valve over things like company-wide (so not just CEO/VIP bonuses) annual paid vacation (woo, go Epic with the Fortnite crunch instead, sweet!).

 

[-Arcadia-]

I like how nobody here actually gives a shit, hahaha.

I’m mostly the same way. I don’t think a professional should be acting this way, but I tire so much of Cancel Culture.

Like, show me where Tyrone Rodriguez (a Mexican man, by the way, looking at his Twitter account), spoke racial obscenities directly to a minority employee, in an act of hate, or actually mistreated employees in any real way. The closest I can come to at a glance are the alleged fat person firing, and the irresponsible (maybe get a contract, though) relationships with other developers.

Even his disgruntled employees contacted for this article, regard him as a friendly guy.

It’s all just humans finding new and different ways to burn witches with the advent of cultural and technological turns.

 

[VertigoOA]

The conversation logs shows that he’s a dumbass.

Don’t really care more than that. Actual crimes would be concerning and accusations of being him being a dick at times ... isn’t.

 

[Shifty]

Whole lotta allegations, not a lotta evidence.

While it's entirely possible that he's a genuine asshole, it's also possible that all of this is being viewed through an unfavourable lens by disgruntled employees that didn't fit into a thick-skinned company culture.

So TL;DR whatever, do your journalistic due diligence and bring receipts next time.

 

[Starlight Lotice]

Seems to be a thing to shit on Bosses of Corporations that want to make money.

Have a boss like this too making sexist remarks so nothing new really but not really a crime to do unless they actively fire people for those reasons.

 

[joe_zazen]

I like how nobody here actually gives a shit, hahaha.

I’m mostly the same way. I don’t think a professional should be acting this way, but I tire so much of Cancel Culture.

Like, show me where Tyrone Rodriguez (a Mexican man, by the way, looking at his Twitter account), spoke racial obscenities directly to a minority employee, in an act of hate, or actually mistreated employees in any real way. The closest I can come to at a glance are the alleged fat person firing, and the irresponsible (maybe get a contract, though) relationships with other developers.

Even his disgruntled employees contacted for this article, regard him as a friendly guy.

It’s all just humans finding new and different ways to burn witches with the advent of cultural and technological turns.

It is part of human nature to need to find an outcast to bully and harass. It is a part of creating group cohesion, which is why you see it even in groups based on love and tolerance.

Have a boss like this too making sexist remarks so nothing new really but not really a crime....

It is an actual crime in places like France.

 

[Katsura]

Oh boy, a Kotaku article based on anonymous sources accusing someone of using ableist slurs? (What the actual fuck is an ableist slur?) Even with an archived link you'd have to pay me to read that shit. If it comes from Kotaku, it goes into the thrash. No exceptions

 

[Varteras]

I have never seen a "gaming journalist" putting so much effort into finding dirt on people (regardless of whether its actually relevant or tabloid-level nitpicks, of which this "article" is chock full) and so little into writing about games.

Yeah. He's not a gaming journalist and I think we all know that. He's a sociopolitical blogger masquerading as a games journalist. He spends a significant amount of his time doing anything he can to "expose evil capitalist companies" to push for unions and socialist policies as well as drag down anyone he can for even remotely engaging in any kind of supposedly bigoted behavior. Which often requires him to make a mountain out of a molehill. Not surprising since his audience seems to be the kind of people who treat being offended as the gravest of outrages.

 

[joe_zazen]

Yeah. He's not a gaming journalist and I think we all know that. He's a sociopolitical blogger masquerading as a games journalist. He spends a significant amount of his time doing anything he can to "expose evil capitalist companies" to push for unions and socialist policies as well as drag down anyone he can for even remotely engaging in any kind of supposedly bigoted behavior. Which often requires him to make a mountain out of a molehill. Not surprising since his audience seems to be the kind of people who treat being offended as the gravest of outrages.

He has found a profitable market niche which he is exploiting like any good capitalist. He is married to a corporate lawyer and lives in one of the most exclusionary cities in the world, & writes about upper middle class white collar workers; guy is no champion of the oppressed, lol.

 

[Varteras]

He has found a profitable market niche which he is exploiting like any good capitalist. He is married to a corporate lawyer and lives in one of the most exclusionary cities in the world, & writes about upper middle class white collar workers; guy is no champion of the oppressed, lol.

Lol no doubt. Most of them aren't.

 

[ZenTheShogun]

Tyrone Rodriguez sounds like a made-up name.

 

[Danny Dudekisser]

Well... some of it's true. Complaining about ghosting is kinda weird - people are busy in the games biz, and not hearing back isn't super uncommon. Nicalis is a bit worse about it than most, but eh, not a big deal. Tyrone's an alright dude. He's got more of a dark sense of humor than some are probably able to tolerate, but I absolutely wouldn't say he's intentionally an asshole. No idea what it's like to work for him or his brother, so... who knows. I will say, though - he can drink. Holy Hell, I've never met someone with his alcohol tolerance.

tl;dr: I wouldn't take it all at face value.

 

[DeliciousDoc]

The beginning feels this might actually be interesting then it goes full

｢Unsolicitated opinion about Israel???｣

We didn't try to contact the accused so they have not commented on the allegations.

 

[Gargus]

Kotaku? Yeah, no thanks.

 

[Allnamestakenlol]

This is a really dumb article.

 

[FranXico]

Objectivity is a silly thing to strive for.

 

[joe_zazen]

It certainly pays worse.

 

[Amish Death Metal]

Tyrone Rodriguez sounds like a made-up name.

A long time ago IGN had a Cars site and that’s where he got his start.

 

[Scopa]

“Waaaaah! Waaaaah! Why are we blacklisted!?” - Jason Schrieier

 

[JimmyJones]

Schreier is like Perez Hilton at the this point.

 

[Slings and Arrows]

I would like to round up all of the soft gaming journalists. Put them in a cinema or theatre, lock the doors and then play Bernard Manning and Roy Chubby Brown stand-up comedies on loop. Kind of like a Clockwork Orange

 

[RokkanStoned]

Well... some of it's true. Complaining about ghosting is kinda weird - people are busy in the games biz, and not hearing back isn't super uncommon. Nicalis is a bit worse about it than most, but eh, not a big deal. Tyrone's an alright dude. He's got more of a dark sense of humor than some are probably able to tolerate, but I absolutely wouldn't say he's intentionally an asshole. No idea what it's like to work for him or his brother, so... who knows. I will say, though - he can drink. Holy Hell, I've never met someone with his alcohol tolerance.

tl;dr: I wouldn't take it all at face value.

Interesting to see the perspective of someone who at least supposedly (after all it is the internet) knows the situation a bit intimately. When taking information from people, one would imagine a balanced approach, to avoid being tendentious and better reflect the situation. Would be nice to see Schreier try to take that approach rather than thoughtlessly just taking whatever gets thrown at him and nitpickingly going after people. He used to be better at presenting the balanced view in some of his previous articles, even if he even then clearly had an angle.

 

[ROMhack]

Didn't see anything malicious in this and I'm a pretty liberal chap. Employers/businesses are often total arseholes but it's the extent to which they're arseholes that matters. If Tyrone is holding people back from seeing their families by making them work stupid amounts of overtime and/or holding pay then it's bad because it impacts their livelihood. If he's making ableist jokes then it's much less egregious. The world is not as black and white as Kotaku sees it, nor are all issues on par with one another.

 

[Shai-Tan]

Yeah. He's not a gaming journalist and I think we all know that. He's a sociopolitical blogger masquerading as a games journalist. He spends a significant amount of his time doing anything he can to "expose evil capitalist companies" to push for unions and socialist policies as well as drag down anyone he can for even remotely engaging in any kind of supposedly bigoted behavior. Which often requires him to make a mountain out of a molehill. Not surprising since his audience seems to be the kind of people who treat being offended as the gravest of outrages.

advocacy or adversarial stances in journalism are still journalism. standards of fairness, humility in reasoning apply regardless so the valid argument is whether or not a piece is good journalism. all journalism has an editorial voice whether desired or not. neutrality is more complicated than it seems at gloss because all stories are reported on or not reported on for reasons that go beyond a particular story

 

[Lionel Richie]

Dude could be losing his mind, the article is barely coherent. I think the bull has been too strict with poor Jason and he's probably monopolizing the wife, there's only so much a guy can take.

 

[Dirk Benedict]

Dude could be losing his mind, the article is barely coherent. I think the bull has been too strict with poor Jason and he's probably monopolizing the wife, there's only so much a guy can take.

Cuck 2: Wife Monopolization

 

[Abriael_GN]

advocacy or adversarial stances in journalism are still journalism. standards of fairness, humility in reasoning apply regardless so the valid argument is whether or not a piece is good journalism. all journalism has an editorial voice whether desired or not. neutrality is more complicated than it seems at gloss because all stories are reported on or not reported on for reasons that go beyond a particular story

There is a giant difference between having an "editorial voice" and writing almost exclusively to push an agenda, almost entirely ignoring the main topic of the publication one writes for.

This is tabloid-level trash and it's toxic and intentionally personally damaging toward an individual with zero evidence to make things even worse. Feel free to call it "journalism" for the sake of semantics if you like, but that doesn't make it any better.

Some call people writing for trashy tabloids like The Sun "journalists." Some have higher standards.

 

[Holammer]

Nicalis sucks for taking so long with 90s Super GP/90s Arcade Racer and apparently the original dev wanting nothing to do with them/it any more

Correct, if we're going to crucify Nicalis over something, it should be because of how 90s Arcade Racer was mishandled.



The Pang Clone at the end here looked freaking brilliant!

 

[Thickandblack]

“He’d be like, ‘Come on, don’t be a little bitch.’” - former Nicalis employee

Jail him for life, ruin his life and cancel his career..... NOW

 

[Catphish]

I would pay for a forum function where, if a certain word is mentioned in the thread title, like, say, Kotaku, the fucking thing is automatically ignored.

Also, this is supposed to be a forum about video games. Kotaku has nothing to fucking do with video games anymore. Any discussion about or from them should be relegated to off-topic, or, better yet, politics.

They're a goddamned cancer on the industry and need to be fucking eradicated.

 

[Hulk_Smash]

Can anyone tell me anything that was truly controversial in the gaming industry that warranted ANY kind of investigative journalism in the past 15 years? (That doesn’t involve Zoe Quinn)

Swatting is the only thing I could think of and that has nothing to do with game developers. Outside of that, I’d have to go all the way back to San Andreas’ hot coffee incident.

Honestly, only two events in the history of gaming I can see warranting true investigative journalism: the crash of 1983 and all the litigation and congressional hearings surrounding violent video games in the early 1990s.

Someone else here at GAF said it best when they said that the SJWs that graduated with a degree in journalism can’t all get paying jobs at whatever newspaper they want to write for so they look to an industry that is not well-established and is willing to hire people who have no real interest in gaming, but can write .

Unfortunately, they picked an industry where there is just not a lot of real controversy. In a gamer’s mind, controversy is something like what happened at No Man’s Sky launch or Konami releasing their next Castlevania as a fucking phone game. These are hobbyists’ concerns, not life-altering think pieces.

Sorry, my SJW comrades, but you picked a boring industry to write for.

 

[Sentenza]

When Kotaku inevitably folds (not soon enough), Schreier has a future in tabloid reporting with The National Enquirer.

Well, at least as long as everyone in the press will keep ignoring the "racist, ableist, sexist and homophobic jokes" he used himself (and profusely) in the past.

 

[EviLore]

 

[Sentenza]

Like, show me where Tyrone Rodriguez (a Mexican man, by the way, looking at his Twitter account), spoke racial obscenities directly to a minority employee, in an act of hate, or actually mistreated employees in any real way. The closest I can come to at a glance are the alleged fat person firing, and the irresponsible (maybe get a contract, though) relationships with other developers.

Even his disgruntled employees contacted for this article, regard him as a friendly guy.

It’s all just humans finding new and different ways to burn witches with the advent of cultural and technological turns.

You. don't. get. it.
He said ABLEIST things (translation: he probably called someone a retard) which is the ultimate crime against humanity as a whole. Or something.

 

[EviLore]

So he didn't follow up on a business opportunity, and he said something mean? Jesus Christ. Pathetic, Kotaku.

 

[Shai-Tan]

There is a giant difference between having an "editorial voice" and writing almost exclusively to push an agenda, almost entirely ignoring the main topic of the publication one writes for.

Last time I checked game journalism is also about the game industry.

This is tabloid-level trash and it's toxic and intentionally personally damaging toward an individual with zero evidence to make things even worse. Feel free to call it "journalism" for the sake of semantics if you like, but that doesn't make it any better.

Some call people writing for trashy tabloids like The Sun "journalists." Some have higher standards.

That is of course your opinion, also inflected by ideology. I can get behind good faith discussion of journalistic practices but hiding behind faux designations isn't attending to the substance.

Valid criticisms I can think of are

1) doesn't know the beat well enough to disentangle testimony about unjust working conditions from resentment in office politics
2) using professional standards (the subject of the article is vulgar in office correspondence) as a bludgeon for the former unaware that civility discourse is also a marker of social class and status\

what I think some are also arguing is:

3) maybe swept up a little too much in revolutionary energy to fairly reckon with particular instances of misbehavior

but status quo bias could also be blamed for those discounting