For those who aren't aware, Stardock Corporation is a software company that provides enhancement utilities for Windows and which also develops, publishes and digitally distributes a number of great PC games.  I'm a huge fan of this company and the way they execute the corporate ideals of their CEO Brad Wardel l, ones which include providing polished products that aren't laden with DRM and offering top-notch service that treats their customers like people rather than just buyers.  Many of their values coincide with those we have at the company I co-own.  However, what I'm writing about today is a rookie mistake many company executives make and which Mr. Wardell unfortunately made himself lately:  combining your business with your personal politics.

Mr. Wardell is very conservative in his political beliefs and to his credit, makes no attempt to hide that fact.  He maintains his own blog which frequently details them.  I've got no qualms with him doing that and I'm not writing this to debate his beliefs.  What concerns me however is when he decided to protest a decidedly political issue with elements of the business he is charged with running, published his intentions and then became agitated when the Internet community called him out for doing the very thing he was decrying someone else for doing.  This is becoming an increasingly large problem with business owners and something that I think needs to be curtailed.

First off, a bit of background:  Recently, it was revealed that in protest of the increasing inflammatory rhetoric being broadcast from anchor Glenn Beck on FOX News, the major courier company UPS had pulled all its advertising from the network and possibly from the entirety of FOX Television.  Stardock was using UPS as the carrier for product they physically shipped to customers.  Mr. Wardell did not approve of UPS doing this, stating that "I don't like to see companies trying to push their ideology on others."  The following day, he requested his employees to start shipping with FedEx instead of UPS.  Shortly after doing this, he posted about it on his Facebook page which he thought was private but someone published the comment which was picked up by the gaming press and like many things in the gaming community, spread like wildfire and inspired a lot of anger.  Many who were very loyal customers of Stardock began calling for boycotts, saying that in effect, Mr. Wardell was endorsing the views of Glenn Beck and FOX News by dropping someone who refused to advertise on the network for supposedly political reasons.  UPS has since claimed that they were in fact not boycotting FOX and that new ads are already running on their networks.

My. Wardell has since blogged about this issue and the response from the gaming community.  He claims his comments and actions were overblown and that he wasn't trying to make any major political or moral statement, he was just annoyed and decided to go with another shipper.  His response was calm, thought out and clear to the point that yes, Stardock is his company and choosing another shipper was his perogative, as it was UPS' to pull their ads from FOX in protest, if that is in fact what they did.  All that said though, I do think he made some very poor errors in judgment and he seems to be a bit too eager to pass blame for this onto others.

Mr. Wardell's company operates almost entirely off online commerce.  He is very familiar with how Internet communities work and how they tend to react to things.  It was a gross oversight on his part to think that this wouldn't get found out about and that the reaction wouldn't be significant, particularly since he published the reasons.  He claims that this was published to a Facebook account he tries to keep private.  But two sentences later, he talks about how he has roughly 350 Facebook  friends.  That's an awfully large number of people to have to trust with a controversial subject.  Anyone who is Internet savvy knows that privacy ultimately doesn't exist online.  Mr. Wardell said "I would be the first to agree with the people who said “It’s not good business to publicize such things”. Except I didn’t."  I'm sorry sir but yes, you did.  If you put something up, you are publishing it and there is a very good chance it will be seen by many people, at least a few of which will strongly disagree with you.  If what you're posting is something you aren't comfortable with the world knowing, don't post it.  Decrying the media for doing their job and republishing something of significance which came across their desk is disingenuous in my opinion.

All of these are merely secondary symptoms of the one core issue which Mr. Wardell unfortunately tripped over:  Never mix your personal politics with your business.   He was actively engaging in what he was attempting to decry UPS for, using their business clout to denounce practices by another business they didn't agree with, an irony I'm not convinced that he fully appreciates.  In his blog post, he claims that one shouldn't mix business and politics when that is precisely what he did--without apologies.  I have no formal business training and the necessity of keeping that separation is something I have known from the very beginning.  I don't preach politically on my company's corporate blog or to our customers and this post isn't about whether or not I agree with Mr. Wardell.  But I can say with some certainty that if Stardock was a public company, he would likely be answering some very tough questions from its board of directors right now.  Speaking for yourself is one thing but speaking through the mouthpiece of your business--whether with words or actions--reflects on your entire operation including the staff and the brand which we all know takes far less work to damage than to build up.  It is unfair to those who work for you to paint them with the brush of your own beliefs.  I doubt Stardock will suffer much economically from this controversy but any drop in business affects everyone there, not just the few at the top.

I still think Stardock embodies corporate values that are sorely lacking in today's world and this flap will not deter me from doing business with them in the future.  However, I would like to urge Mr. Wardell and any other fellow business owners who might read this to really consider the value of keeping your personal views on politics or whatever else just that, personal.  It's good to have your own ideals and to express them and fight for the change in the world you want to see.  More of us need to do that.  But your business involves more than just yourself and it is critical to make sure it doesn't end up unintentionally adopting your views as well.  Chances are many of your customers are also your political opponents and politics are never a good reason to push people away.

NOTE:  This was originally an entry I wrote for the corporate blog of the startup company I run with a friend.  I'm posting it here because I wanted to share my thoughts with the gaming community, not to try to plug my company which is just a local firm anyway.  Our company name is mentioned but I am not linking to our site.  You can find us on your own if you want.

As you can already see, this will be a long post and is my first attempt at a business essay of sorts.

When Dan and I first decided to start the company, we made an unequivocal commitment to operating with the utmost honesty and integrity, the inspiration for which largely came from our experiences at other employers.  Some of our competition as well as the general business environment in which we operate test this often.  We are offered "business is war" and "you have to do what you must to succeed" as advice with disturbing frequency from those with far more business cache than us.  However, our resolve has always been that if operating as we do results in slower growth or even failure, we will have attained our status with a clear conscience.  While we understand that there are a growing number of businesspeople who are willing to fill the moral and ethical gray area in which we refuse to tread, we prefer to use the examples they set as inspiration for how we should avoid behaving, rather than idolizing their success as many do.  This essay cites a recent example from an industry and pastime that Dan and I are great enthusiasts of, video games.

If you aren't into gaming and in particular, haven't followed the hobby going back a number of years, you probably haven't heard of Tim Schafer.  He's a designer who holds a legendary status among many for his contributions to a number of ingenious and more importantly, hilarious adventure games for LucasArts, the video game division of the George Lucas empire.  In the late 90s, adventure games began a decline in popularity and LucasArts largely abandoned the genre.  In 2000, Schafer left to form his own studio called Double Fine Productions.  Their first title was called Psychonauts and came out in 2005.  While not an adventure game in the traditional sense, it still retained the quirky humour and brilliantly imaginative world design that Schafer was known for and despite some gameplay flaws, is still hailed by many (myself included) as a great creative achievement.  It was originally to be published by Microsoft Game Studios but was dropped by them and ultimately, the game was released by a small publisher whose experience with big budget titles was limited to say the least.  Despite receiving rave reviews across the board, Psychonauts received almost no marketing help and was ultimately a sales flop.  Despite this setback, Double Fine still had enough resources to start work on an even more ambitious project, Brutal Legend.

This new game is as creatively and financially daring as Psychonauts was and is shaping up to have an equally tumultuous time getting to market.  The title was originally to be published by Sierra Entertainment, a now disbanded imprint of top five publisher Vivendi Games.  In 2008, Vivendi merged with Activision, the number two publisher in the world to form the mega publisher Activision Blizzard.  The new company immediately took first place from Electronic Arts who were the undisputed top dogs for many years.  Activision owns some of the most recognised and successful video game series in the world including Guitar Hero, Call of Duty, Tony Hawk, World of Warcraft, plus the rights to games based on a number of big movie licenses, all of which sell millions of units per year.  Their ability to make large sums of money is simply undeniable.  However, the company has also quickly earned a reputation for not fostering creativity or new ideas and pushing out many sequels to the same franchises, usually on a yearly basis.  CEO Bobby Kotick has gone on record saying that his goal was to foster franchises that could only be "exploited" on a yearly basis.  To his credit, this is a strategy that has worked very well for them.  This will be where my credit to him ends.

Shortly after the creation of Activision Blizzard, the company quickly and unceremoniously cut loose a number of titles and entire studios that didn't fit Kotick's vision.  The majority found homes at other publishers fairly quickly and have either been released already or will be soon.  Brutal Legend went without any word for a while though and the gaming community became concerned that no one would be willing to take a risk on Schafer's new and unusual idea.  However, last December gamers were both shocked and elated to hear that former first place publisher Electronic Arts--who themselves were not known for taking risks--had partnered with Double Fine to release the game.  Since then, EA has thrown a sizable amount of their marketing muscle behind the game, making its release in October a major event and stirring up lots of excitement for it.  Things finally seemed to be going right for Tim Schafer and his team at Double Fine.  A few months later though, the air began to sour once again.

This past February, Activision began grumbling that though they had dropped Brutal Legend and left it in limbo, they in fact still been "in negotiations" for it and that as a result, Double Fine's deal with EA was invalid.  Everyone involved dismissed this as little more than posturing, with an EA spokesperson going so far as to publicly equate the situation to "a husband abandoning his family and then suing after his wife meets a better looking guy."  This was also unusual behaviour for the rival company but gamers around the world applauded their tough stance.  Nothing more was heard for months and most assumed the issue had fizzled.  That all changed this past week.  On the last day of E3 (the yearly video game industry trade show), it was revealed in the press that Activision had filed suit against Double Fine Productions, claiming that they were not legally permitted to give publishing rights to Electronic Arts and that Activision still has the rights to release the game, which they claim to have invested almost $15 million dollars in.  Tim Schafer responded with his usual brand of humour but no more has been heard on the issue since.

Now that you've heard the story, you may wonder why I chose to use it as the basis for an essay on shoddy business practices.  Some of you may be siding with Activision, thinking Double Fine jumped the gun handing their publishing rights to someone else.  After all, if Activision supposedly put so much money into the project, one would expect them to fight to protect that investment.  To someone who doesn't follow this industry or these games as people like us do, that's an easy conclusion to reach.  However, most of us on the enthusiast side have recognised several key tells that give us reason to believe that this is a case of sour grapes and Activision trying to exact revenge for what was ultimately a short sighted decision on their part.

Firstly, the new Activision Blizzard cut loose Brutal Legend back in July 2008, almost a year ago.  Yet, they claim to have been "in negotiations" during this whole period of time, in which they coordinated the sale of a number of other high profile titles and indeed, entire development studios.  Double Fine is a small, independent company who is self-funding Brutal Legend--a very rare thing in today's video game industry--despite already having one title fail to be a sales hit in an industry where one miss is usually enough to sink a developer.  How long were they expected to sit and wait?  In this period, they must have known that Double Fine was courting other publishers or at the very least, would have found out when a new deal was announced.  They had ample opportunity to stop a new deal from happening before now but didn't do so.

Secondly, due to Sierra not heavily promoting Brutal Legend before the Vivendi/Activision merger, few outside the enthusiast gamer community knew about it.  With the budget for most "AAA" games now exceeding $30 million, appealing only to enthusiasts simply isn't enough to succeed.  After EA acquired the publishing rights, they began a heavy marketing campaign which has quickly driven up mainstream awareness and excitement for the game.  It is reasonable to assume that upon seeing this reaction, Activision may have had second thoughts on whether losing Brutal Legend was a good thing for their business and maybe saw potential for it to become the type of mega franchise they aim for.

Lastly, you will notice from the lawsuit announcement that Activision chose to go after Double Fine and not EA, the company that is supposedly publishing a game they have no claim to.  This is perhaps the most telling indication of their true intentions.  EA and Activision are both massive companies with armies of lawyers.  Entities like these don't sign agreements they aren't certain of.  If EA signed on Brutal Legend, they would have done their due diligence and been certain who owned what rights to it.  To claim that a legal mishap of this nature took place is disingenuous at best, ludicrous at worst.  Also, it would only make sense to name them as a party in a lawsuit over the publishing rights since they are publicly claiming to be the rightful publisher.  However, Double Fine is the small company who is likely low on cash since they are so far into development of Brutal Legend and they don't have the aforementioned legion of litigators that EA has.  Mounting a legal fight against Activision will undoubtedly be difficult for them and even if they manage to do so, it will drain away from the profits they hope to see from the game's release.  I am not sure if the US civil system would permit EA to enter the fight with them but if not, this could be a very precarious situation for Double Fine.

To me, Activision Blizzard's motivations are crystal clear.  They dumped a title they didn't think they could turn into a yearly series, a rival picked it up, poured money into it and generated a ton of buzz for it.  Then after it turns out Activision may have made a bad call, they are saying "if we can't have it, no one can."  An equivalent in our industry would be a bigger competitor giving us a service call because they were too busy to handle it, us finding out after that it was for a massive client who wanted to spend thousands of dollars and then the competitor demanding months later that we give the client back to them along with all the money we'd already billed them.  It is petty, manipulative, anti-competitive and unethical.  Yet, not only does the business community at large tolerate this kind of behaviour, Activision Blizzard would likely have been faulted for not taking this course of action, regardless of how weak their case seems to be.  Meanwhile, a small company who has only ever wanted to release a quality product is facing a David vs. Goliath situation when they are perhaps at their most vulnerable. In my opinion, this is just unquestionably wrong and is another example of a large corporation feeling they don't have to accept the consequences of their decisions.  One would think that in light of the huge number of corporate scandals the world has seen in recent years, that fewer executives would cling to the erroneous mindset that being big means you don't have to be accountable.  Yet it seems that as the number and scope of the corruption increases, so does the belief that such actions are the right thing to do, simply because they are "in the best interests of shareholders."  

There are several possible outcomes to this scenario and obviously, I am hoping that Double Fine is able to fight Activision Blizzard and emerge victorious.  I want Brutal Legend to succeed so that a great designer can keep making the games he wants to make and that I want to play.  I will buy the game day one no matter whose name is on it but it will sadden me if I see the Activision moniker on the package.  I follow the video game industry closely and hear about questionable business decisions all the time but this one in particular struck a chord with me and reminded me of exactly why Dan and I committed to taking honesty and integrity so seriously.  We talked about this concept when we were planning the business and have both agreed that should either of us start to fall off the path of honest business as Activision Blizzard seems to have, that we have passed our period of being valuable to the vision we created for Digital Lifeline.  Of course, our company exists to make money, as every company does and I don't think Bobby Kotick is necessarily a bad person, just an executive who thinks he is serving his shareholders.  My problem is that a great many would see that as all the justification he needs in order to sleep well at night.  With respect to those who hold a much higher business standing than I, just because it is best for your shareholders doesn't might it the right thing to do.

Activision Blizzard was already making tons of money and continues to so why can't they just be content with that and accept the lessons learned from letting Brutal Legend get away?  Why do they have to put a small and dedicated team in front of a perilous situation rather than just admitting they screwed up and wishing them luck?  Is what few extra cents per share Brutal Legend could have brought their stock price really worth the good will they are losing from enthusiast gamers and the potential livelihoods of the dozens of staff at Double Fine?  To me, the answer to this is clear but the more I see this kind of thing, the more I realise that my opinion may be the minority one.

When we started Digital Lifeline, we weren't naive about the business world.  We knew we were walking into an arena where more people played dirty than not and where trying to be an example of how to succeed while being honest was an uphill battle to say the least.  When I read stories like this though, I realise for the first time just what kind of people and tactics we may face in the future and I have to say that it both scares and saddens me more than a little bit.  I do remain confident that we will be able to lead by example and that as we continue to grow, we and those who share our corporate values will be able to raise the bar for the more established players.  Maybe one day, actions like Activision Blizzard's will be met with scorn rather than applause.  I look forward to that day.