Got a statement from the founder/CEO

[Sunderbraze]

So, the original founder/CEO of Red 5 Studios, Mark Kern, aka Grummz, has been pretty active on Twitter recently and involving himself in all sorts of big discussions. He ended up being a guest on a youtube channel that I frequent, and I caught it live, so I figured, why not see if I could get him to make a statement about Firefall and why we should take him seriously after what happened to the game?

https://www.youtube.com/live/bVaSN4Cqo-I?feature=shared&t=3000
My question came around 50:00 and it took a bit of time for the host to read it because the YT interface likes to cut off superchats after 120 characters.

TL;DW: Mark gives a surprisingly detailed answer, it felt pretty cathartic to hear him describe the decline of the game after The9 bought it out during beta. Most interesting tidbit of info was the fact that he actually reported The9 to the FBI over some attempts at bribery.

This isn't really verifiable without pestering former Red 5 devs, but apparently, when the infamous Christmas-with-no-pay came along, a bunch of them who were happy to see him go turned around and e-mailed him to tell him he was right all along about The9. I'd be very curious to hear if any Red 5 vets are willing to admit to that.

I might unironically put in a FOIA for that FBI report he mentioned. Not sure if I'm actually allowed to, since I work for a different DOJ component, but seems like it's worth finding out. I doubt the FBI ever pursued it, because corporate espionage investigations take a long time when hostile jurisdictions like China are involved, and even if they started looking, The9 has pretty much disappeared from the US entirely at this point. It would be pretty hilarious if The9 were literally being investigated for criminal activity at the time of Firefall's shutdown.

My only regret is that I didn't frame the question against the game's successor EM8ER. I was hoping he'd elaborate on how he won't let the same thing happen again, but he was curiously silent about it despite wearing a t-shirt with the logo. Oh well. Make of that what you will. Catharsis is worth way more than $100 to me but I wasn't about to start spamming the show with hundred dollar questions lol

[Randy Marsh]

I'm pretty sure anyone can put in a FOIA request for anything, anywhere

Haven't heard the name EM8ER in a while, sup with that?

[MAD Pigeon]

Video's gone?

[TΞSTOSTΞROWNLOL]

Originally posted by Randy Marsh:

I'm pretty sure anyone can put in a FOIA request for anything, anywhere

Haven't heard the name EM8ER in a while, sup with that?

DOA. Good will is only spent once.

[ploopploop]

Rip video has been removed

[Delta25]

I tend to believe Mark, The 9 is Chinese after all. However They fired him for a reason, reason was he would have them redo the core mechanics of the game or add stuff/remove stuff at will. I played with a lot of the devs on that game since i was a beta founder talked to the economic dude that was hired to balance their in game economy. good people

[ploopploop]

Originally posted by Delta25:

I tend to believe Mark, The 9 is Chinese after all. However They fired him for a reason, reason was he would have them redo the core mechanics of the game or add stuff/remove stuff at will. I played with a lot of the devs on that game since i was a beta founder talked to the economic dude that was hired to balance their in game economy. good people

I didn't talk much with the devs, but been there since alpha and beta due to kickstarter and the early server tests they had.

I remember up until the progression tree with pvp that the game was amazing and indeed somewhere around beta is when they suddenly removed mechanics and imo the game took a turn for the worse. This however aligns perfectly with the time that the other company pretty much absorbed them. It was a short term financial success, but in the long run I feel that it was a mistake.

[Sonic23]

I do not trust Grubbz, political reasons aside, the guy was always very assinine to any kind of feedback by either the Red 5 devs or the community, several videos about the topic (which I mostly recommend of "Death of a Game: Firefall") mention with proof how he kept spending money on either non-related stuff or development of systems the rest of the dev team nor the community really enjoyed (some of the weapon changes later introduced come to mind), while throwing fits about people wanting stuff that he didn't (afair including some kickstarter goals that never got implemented), which to this day he still blames for the fall of the game instead of the actual reason being him horrible at management.

Not cutting The9 off the hook either, a lot of F2P games that got to them ended up exactly like Firefall, but with the topic being Grubbz, there is a reason he still blames the game dying on people wanting female PCs (which was just one of the small things people wanted in terms of character customization) while being completely avoidant of any other topics that surround the game's development in a public manner.

TL;DR: Grubbz was a terrible producer that bankrupt his company and sold the dryed up carcass to people specialized in bankrupting game projects.

[♥ Beepy ♥]

That's because Em8er is nothing more than a scam and all "Grummz" has done recently is be a professional troll.

I mean, c'mon, the dude blew 3 million of our dollars on a bus instead of putting it towards Firefall development.

[TΞSTOSTΞROWNLOL]

Originally posted by ♥ Beepy ♥:

That's because Em8er is nothing more than a scam and all "Grummz" has done recently is be a professional troll.

I mean, c'mon, the dude blew 3 million of our dollars on a bus instead of putting it towards Firefall development.

At least we have a party bus to show for...

What a legendary piece of ♥♥♥♥ that bus was xD