As someone who was let down by Jirard's choice to double down and threaten his accusers, I actually don't think he needs to be removed. If anything, the fact that his role in the game is to take donations becomes more of a snarky meta commentary. I get that Sabotage studio is probably really hurt by this given their close relationship with IndieLand, and they have every right to do whatever they want with their art, but experiencing the irony here should be preserved and available to the public.
this post was submitted on 16 Dec 2023
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I heard that it's an internet joke that his character asks for donations, in fact what he actually says in-game is something else.
I got to the part where he asked for building plans- seemed like donations would be the next part of the quest but my Game Pass sub ran out 😅
I get if they dont want an homage character to become a biting satire of a former business partner. Especially if they dont want someone to not get the bit, and think less of the game for having a known scammer cameo in it
Not that its really even their fault, seeing as this came out before the charity mess did
Having kept up on the drama I'm sure Jirard was devastated by this. He's built a brand on being a nice guy, but be it by malfeasance, or incompetence he screwed up royaly. Hope we get the full story and find out he and his family are just idiots, not criminals. Especially with it all steming from his mother's illness.
The evidence does point to just pure incompetence but it's hard to believe he didn't know that none of the money had been sent over the past decade, especially since he claimed multiple times they spent it. If not him, someone in the charity must've stolen the money and lied to him. Guess we'll wait and see.
So we don't know the whole story, but he was removed from the game, anyway? Not cool.
Thierry can do whatever he wants with his game, but ending a long and profitable (both emotionally and financially, presumably) friendship simply because of unproven allegations seems like a very short-sighted, fear-driven move.
They did it to protect the brand or whatever, but actions like this harm the brand in my eyes. Shows they care more about public perception than truth and justice. I, for one, will be removing Sea of Stars from my wishlist because of this.
Unless Thierry comes out and says he knew all along about The Completionist, which is literally the only way to justify such a preemptive sanction, he has irreparably harmed his integrity, IMO.
That the Open Hand charity screwed up bad. Jirard's character was a guy that took donations to complete charitable works. The real life charity took all the donations and held them for 10 years while telling everybody that their money was going directly to charities for research. They listed multiple charities that they work with that they had never worked with. These are indisputable facts and at the very least should be enough to justify this removal.
To add to that, it seems like they were at least procrastinating in their donations. They claimed that it was to find a charity that would use all the money donated exclusively for research but the charity they finally donated to allows that for any amount if you ask. The donation was made a month after being called out for not donating for 10 years.
Okay, yeah, that's pretty bad. Thanks for expanding my understanding. I'd never actually heard any of these names other than Sea of Stars before this post, so I came in pretty blind.
Honestly, I was more airing my frustration with what seemed at first glance like a very similar situation to the whole Justin Roiland thing from earlier this year. He got kicked off his own shows based on what turned out to be false allegations, and never got so much as a public apology.
I'll still wait to pass judgement until more is known, but I at least see that the content removal wasn't purely done out of fear of public response.
A wild Justin Roiland truther has appeared.
So he's an asshole. That's pretty on-brand for him. Doesn't make him guilty or deserving of getting hit with the cancel stick.
Making comments like that and worse to young teenage fans makes him look a lot like a predator. You should read some of the text exchanges where he’s encouraging girls who he’s been talking to for years and have just turned 18 to hang out and get drunk with him.
Roiland isn't a great person, but great artists rarely are. All charges were dropped, so all he's guilty of is being a horny creep, like most men of his generation.
I personally wouldn't do anything like that now, but I definitely would have in my cringey youth. People learn and grow. I'm not him, so I can't say with certainty, but I'm pretty sure he won't do or say anything like that again. How does canceling him now benefit anyone?
He's from the 80s. I generally despise sweeping generalisations about generations, but I don't think I've seen "millennials are sexual predators" before.
I don't think I'll ever understand you people who exist in this weird venn crossover of "This is America it's their right to perv on teens/be a bigot/whatever other skeevy shit" and "You're literally infringing on their freedom if you decide you don't want to work with somebody, you should be forced to do business with them regardless of how terrible or toxic they are"
And I don't think I'll ever understand you people who live in this weird dimension where everything is an extreme and nuance doesn't exist.
But hey, in the spirit of cooperation, I'll gladly share the extra straw I have out back, 'cause it seems you enjoy building strawmen.
There's no extreme here buddy, except yours. You admit guy is an asshole, then complain that people didn't want to continue working with said asshole. Why does he have the right to be a terrible person, but his coworkers don't have a right to cut ties with him?
I never said anything about rights. Again you're putting words in my mouth. Gross. Stay out of my mouth.
Of course people have the right to choose not to work with him. What I'm saying is that it's morally wrong to force him out of his own show because he used to be a horny, creepy jerk. He's (probably) learned his lesson and nobody else will be "victimized" by him, so all forcing him out does is harm the show and him. Nobody benefits.
"I'm not saying they can't not work with him, I'm just saying it's morally wrong to not work with him."
There's actually alot more than this single issue to him being let go anyway (not that you care,) but it's super telling about you as a person that you're dying on this hill that it's infinitely more morally wrong to refuse to work with a pedo creep than it is to be a pedo creep.
You keep putting words in my mouth. Is it a fetish thing? I don't wanna kink shame, but I did ask you to stop a few comments ago.
Since you seem to have a need to paint someone as the "bad guy" in this conversation, why don't I help? It's you. You're the bad guy. You repeatedly, blatantly attribute false quotes to me, then use those false premises to try to win an argument that you started. There are only so many "putting words in my mouth" and "extra straw" jokes I can make, so I'm done.
Congratulations! You win by default. Go tell all your friends and neighbors that you beat back the evil forces of nuance and mutual understanding with nothing but a battalion of straw men.
Summarizing what you said isnt putting words in your mouth.
You need to understand that quotation marks are used around speech summations, as well as direct quotations.
It makes you look foolish, to keep pointing at a proverbial windmill and scream about the giant on the hilltop.
You really can't deal with being wrong, can you? I feel bad for you. Life must be hard, being unable to admit your own faults and constantly projecting onto others. I bet all your friends secretly hate you, assuming you have any at all.
You know those are intentionality inaccurate summaries, but you just can't help yourself. Your little obsession with trying to make me look bad is, as you love to condescending say, cute, but I'm over it.
Just please don't follow me around Lemmy. You were wrong. You made a mistake. Accept it and move on.
Damn, learning what a summary is fuckin cut you to your core, huh boo boo bear?
You wanna try flailing blindly again? You might land one
The sneak edit is cute, but you realize both of these convos are in the same thread, right? Like, I just scrolled down a bit?
I could also razz you on your defense of a creepy pedo pest if you want, but you kinda got dragged through the mud so I figured that was covered
But, what about the golf event money? Where's the rest of the money for those events?
Jirard's donation of the money they have is an attempt to distract from the real embezzlement crimes. They stole money. The math doesn't add up. And now they want you to believe that 100% of the money was just sitting in a bank account for 10 years that they finally donated.
It doesn't add up because we have zero internal numbers. He already admitted the donations went towards paying for the events so why couldn't it be possible that the numbers reported are what they are because of all the money spent on the events. It doesn't make it right in the least since Jirard was saying all the money was going to the charity, but it is a possible explanation aside from embezzlement.
The event costs is embezzlement -the donations were taken with a promise they wouldn't be spent on that, and paying for the event means paying for content for his channel, paying to promote his channel, paying to expand his subscriber base, etc.
Compare it to a non-charity event on his channel. He makes content, he takes the money from subscriptions. A "charity event" would then be when he makes content and instead of taking money from subscriptions, he donates it. If the "charity event" is still him making content, and him still taking money from subscriptions, then that's more like a non-charity event. Even if a donation is made with some of the money then the event is still a non-charity event in the sense that he said he was donating the event itself, i.e. not being compensated for it - if he's being compensated for the event then he didn't donate "the event", he was employed for the event.
He already admitted the donations went towards paying for the events
Those gaps are too wide for just the event costs. And even if it was, I would still suspect embezzlement, in the style of Hollywood accounting.
Possibly but I'm trying my best to not make any statements that do not have concrete proof.
Its kinda funny to criticize someone for supposed preemptive action by yourself making a preemptive action.
Doesn't apply to this situation, but I guess I get how that could be mildly humorous.
Fully applies here, because the legal documents that the charity has posted for the past decade are more than the ample amount of evidence to drop jirard like a hot stone.
Jirard claims the reason why he lied for a decade about donating the money instead of hoarding it like a dragon is sheer incompetence. Many people think that is a lie, and its actually a long con he was in on the while time.
But regardless of if he was actively evil or just horridly incompetent with the money of hundreds of thousands of trusting fans, both explanations are full reasons to cut contact with him on a business and personal level.
What company wants jirard the "10 year long charity fumbler" completionist as a partner? Who would intentionally advertise that they work with either the charity scammer or the guy who didnt realize his charity wasnt a charity for a decade?
So a completely rational business cuts ties with a bad business partner. And you respond by misreading an internet comment, and taking the game out of your wishlist.
Yeah, and if you look further down, you'll see I was ignorant of that until another commenter informed me, then I changed my tune accordingly.
Regardless, there was nothing preemptive on my end. "Preemptive" means taking preventive action in anticipation of something possible in the future. I was reactive; I saw the content removal as morally wrong, and reacted with a small personal protest (which, granted, I didn't edit out of my original comment, but have since rescinded). Nothing preemptive about it.
Semantics are fun!
Yes, and so was the removal of jirard from sea of stars. Reacting to the knowledge that jirard mishandled his charity. Thats why it was funny. Because you mislabeled what they did while doing the same thing they did.
Im sorry, I didnt think that part needed spelling out.
Still not preemptive, though. Do you seriously not understand what the word means? I even gave you an armchair definition in my last comment.
Here, this might help: https://www.dictionary.com/browse/preemptive
EDIT: I think I finally understand. You must've forgotten what your original reply said. Here it is:
Its kinda funny to criticize someone for supposed preemptive action by yourself making a preemptive action.
That doesn't jive with this in your most recent comment:
Because you mislabeled what they did while doing the same thing they did.
I hate to argue semantics - that's a lie; I actually love it, but I know most people hate it - but while the latter quote is correct in the context of my misguided li'l protest (I mislabeled a simple reaction as preemptive, then I made a simple reaction), it's an incorrect explanation of the "humorous observation" - that I mislabeled a simple reaction as preemptive, then I made a preemptive action.
I understand that appearing intelligent is probably very important to you, so you really should make more of an effort to reread your posts when somebody calls out a mistake you've made, rather than dig your heels in.
Learning from our mistakes is how we grow.
..... Yes, which is why it was funny. You mislabeled their reactive comments as preemptive when they werent, while doing the same thing they did while calling it reactive.
Pumpkin, do I need to draw you pictures? Ive explained this for you 3 times.
Adding an edit hours after my comment is cute, but adding an edit where you detail misunderstanding my first comment is adorable.
Yeah, I started to edit then got distracted. I have a life.
Do you get some satisfaction out of constantly lying? Or are you truly that dense? Either way, I suppose there's no point in continuing this.
You got more upvotes than me, so I guess that means you win. Your mother must be so proud.
Jesus, you care about votes on lemmy? Im sorry to hear that bud
Ive repeated myself so many different ways for you, to help you grok the sentence everyone else got the first time. Its very cute you think the same concept reworded for you in different ways is what lying is.
Are you this big a dickrider for jirard? Or did I accidentally step on an insecurity of yours? If I did I promise it wasnt on purpose
Yeah it's hard to speculate right now and we may never know. Jirard's story changed so much between the phone call and his YouTube response. Much like you given the nature of where this stemmed from I'd like to attribute it to screwing up than anything else because it's pretty dark otherwise.
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I feel Charity Controversy downplays him preventing over $30,000 in donations.