The DeanBeat: ArenaNet’s disaster sends shock waves into gaming

I was on vacation last week, hanging out with my extended family and playing a few games on my aging iPhone 6, my Nintendo Switch, and the Oculus Go. I was ready to write about that vacation gaming for this column, but then I saw an unraveling — or maybe a social media apocalypse — on the Internet. You might be busy and could be tempted to stay out of this, but I’m writing about it here because we shouldn’t do that. We should really think about this incident and everything that’s going to come from it.

On Friday, ArenaNet fired two Guild Wars 2 writers after a heated exchange with fans on Twitter. It was sad and unfortunate and so unnecessary, but then it spiraled even further out of control. One of the writers, Jessica Price, struck back at the company, saying it “folded like a cheap card table” at the instant that fans expressed their outrage at what she said to a fan.