The IndieBeat: ArenaNet’s firings heighten concerns about company policies and harassment

It’s been a week since ArenaNet fired Guild Wars 2 narrative designer Jessica Price and writer Peter Fries without any warning, and the statements the company has released since then have only caused more outrage.

The short version of what happened is this: Price tweeted a thread explaining the intricacies and challenges of writing characters for a massively multiplayer online role-playing game. YouTuber and ArenaNet content partner Deroir replied to the thread with his layperson take on the subject, and Price was having none of it. She shut him down, drawing the ire of an internet mob — or at least the ire of bots and sock puppet accounts, according to Giant Spacekat cofounder and U.S. House of Representatives candidate Brianna Wu. Her colleague Fries came to her defense, and for both their troubles, ArenaNet fired them.