The one thing the whole art director fiasco did accomplish...

[Ereghor the Enigmatic]

...was actually shining a spotlight on this, with more forum engagement around the game than ever. I am somewhat sure almost no one outside of the Obsidian-aware even knew Avowed existed in the first place before all this, and many of those may have seen it as a departure from what the company is actually good at anyway.

The "industry" is rather adamant that any publicity is good publicity, huh. Well, similar publicity didn't really save other games which had their devs openly and self-assuredly piss in the face of the potential customers this year. It may have stoked the fire a bit, too bad the fuel for it was some low-grade sh*t.

[darkholyPL]

In the current, digital age there is no longer such a thing as 'any publicity is good publicity'.
Bad publicity is very much a thing, and it has brought many a company down, as we have seen in recent years.
But as always the 'industry' at large is slow to adapt, not realising how much damage to their brand they are doing.

Well good riddance to bad rubbish I say.