Zachary Doig, senior community manager of the American World of Tanks team, has left Wargaming. He made this decision because, in his opinion, the unfair dismissal of another employee. According to Doig, Wargaming simply made a member of his team a “scapegoat” in a scandalous situation around one of the ships in World of Warships.World of Tanks
A little background
This week it became known that Elias K. Grodin, known by the nickname Gneisenau013, was fired from Wargaming.
His last big project at the company was the development of the HMCS Yukon ship for World of Warships, which he supervised as a project manager.
Initially, the British battleship was planned to be created in close cooperation with members of the community and the contributors program. They offered their ideas on both the design and gameplay mechanics of the new ship. However, as a result, none of their proposals were implemented in the final version of Yukon.
The release of the battleship took place at the end of June and caused great dissatisfaction in the World of Warships community. Grodin himself tried to explain the situation and apologized to contributors and players.
Battleship HMCS YukonAs it turned out, he did not warn his team about the degree of user involvement in the creation of Yukon.
The developers thought that the contributors were not the main authors of the ship’s concept, but only offered ideas on its appearance.
The misunderstanding persisted after Grodin left for another project. He handed over the remaining cases to the team, and the main development of the battleship was already completed at that time.
Despite all the problems, the contributors themselves had no complaints about Grodin. On the contrary, they were happy to work with him. That is why part of the World of Warships community felt that the employee was forced to write this apology and take full responsibility for himself.
A few days ago, in the profile of Gneisenau013, a die disappeared stating that he is an employee of Wargaming. The company itself has not made official statements, but the players believe that Grodin was fired precisely because of the situation with Yukon.
Community Manager’s commentOn September 8, Zachary “CabMech” Doig tweeted a big statement about the Gneisenau013 scandal.
In the post, he announced his retirement from Wargaming. Doig worked for the company for more than five years and served as a senior event and community manager in the American division of World of Tanks.
It turned out that Grodin, despite participating in the work on World of Warships, was also a member of his team. And it was his dismissal that influenced Doig’s decision to leave the company. He noted that Wargaming launched an unfair and “illegal” campaign against Gneisenau013 in order to shift all responsibility onto him and make him a “scapegoat”.
pic.twitter.com/N82X0xvAYH
— CabMech (@CabMech) September 8, 2021
According to the former World of Tanks community manager, the leaders tried their best to get Grodin out of the team. He called this behavior “cowardly and shameful.” Doig stated that all this is a consequence of the toxic corporate culture that has been developing in Wargaming over the past four years.
Despite the disagreements and problems that have arisen, CabMech urged users not to judge the entire company badly by the actions of individual managers. “Wargaming has thousands of dedicated employees who work hard every day to provide you with the best gaming experience,” Doig said.
Grodin’s dismissal and Doig’s departure are far from the only scandals that have occurred around the Wargaming gaming community recently.
In August, World of Warships streamers announced a boycott of the company amid increasing complaints about loot boxes and gambling mechanics. In the same month, Wargaming suspended an employee who hid an insult to a Russian-speaking streamer and former contributor Turry in one of the promo codes. The company called such actions unacceptable.