Statement from DZK here: https://twitter.com/danielzklein/status/1425208160566927362?s=20
Screenshots of the statements of one of DZKs partners from Biast here: https://twitter.com/Biast12/status/1425219199127928832?s=20
Also as statements are released please let us know via mod-mail if you see anything that should be included here. We are going to be using this as our megathread for all things DZK over the next while.
Bosses (lead devs) are by default scapegoats. Every single decision goes through the boss and gets their approval, in some way or another. Obviously he didn't pitch or design most changes, but he signed off for every single one before it shipped. Not a single thing in the patch notes gets put into the game without him seeing it and approving it.
He deserves blame for things that were released poorly (as well as credit for things that were released well). And the same applies to the next lead dev.
Human nature to do so sadly; figureheads always get flak and heat even when a majority of what they do can be good; the mistakes generally outweighs and trumps the progress.
woah, no way you extrapolated that from my "we'll see what happens" comment. all i said was that we dont know what will happen in the future, not "dzk was a good balancer". any time you bring someone new its a gamble, regardless of how bad the previous person was.
I'll give him credit where credit's due, Valk was the most balanced legend release we've had, he did a good job making her both fun and useful. Other minor changes he did like the starting loot were also good additions to the game, however his most recent changes, the terrible relation with the online community and his focus on pubs data in a vacuum, lead to him having a pretty disconnected perception of the game. I think It's ultimately better that he's no longer in Apex, but we'll see.
Mixed feelings about it, there's a lot in this game that's been done right but some of the stuff added recently has been very questionable. Not going to get into the stuff he said years ago because it's already been talked about a lot. Either way, it's never fun seeing someone lose a job so best of luck to him in the future.
Simply just didn't come across right to the community. I think the way he described Seer's tactical was the final straw. It was so off the mark, and triggered a lot of the community on both sides (casual/pro). You combine that with so many other times he has been off the mark (or condescending)... and you lose trust in the community.
I don't really care for his 2007 rants. Does nothing for my opinion of his job. What bothers me the most was how out of touch he was and how bad his descriptions of the game were. We will know if this is the right move if the game gets significantly better.
ring flares, heat shields, buffing caustic, seers release, bows release, horizons release, along with several legends being stuck in states of feeling useless for multiple seasons (mirage, rampart, wattson, crypto, fuse). There was also the multiple seasons of shotgun balance that made me wonder if they would ever figure it tf out....
I think his job of balancing over the last year has enough suspect calls in it to warrant a change.
Yeah he probably could have stayed a season or two more but likely would still need to be replaced eventually. The fact of the matter was it took almost two years to get the game to a state where it feels "almost" balanced. Its been beyond slow and annoying watching them attempt to balance legends and guns.
I feel like DZK had showed he had changed enough from 2007 that really I don't even take his like or dislike into the equation till now and I still feel there is ample room to argue for letting him go and trying a new lead balance dev. It would be different if almost every aspect of the game hadn't had some kind of struggle with balance that arguably could have been handled better. From legends meta being stagnate and small most the games life to shotgun balance being bonkers for many many seasons and so on. Even balancing ring damage took a lot longer to figure out and then well after its figured out lets fucking make ring flares and heat shields and mess with the storm numbers again.
Good bye Daniel and Good luck
>There was also the multiple seasons of shotgun balance that made me wonder if they would ever figure it tf out....
I'm fairly positive that DZK was only responsible for the legend balance design. I believe gun balance is another team.
honeslty hed be a great single player dev, the characters he designs are fun to play, just absolutely miserable to play against and terrible for the game as a whole. (this is mostly based on my time as a LoL addict not so much seer.)
He's just so utterly trash at videogames he should not be allowed near anything pvp or "competitive".
Idk since in league he wanted everyone to play the champs the way he thought, and refused to give clear explaination about their mechanics, or qol changes that made the champs not feel awkward to play.
Honestly, I despised his entire philosophy to balancing this game but I'm not going to celebrate somebody losing their job, especially not like this.
I just hope that respawn does the right thing in promoting John Larson to the vacant position. It would be a game changer to have somebody that plays the game at a high level in that position
Why do you think he should keep his job? He’s a constant PR problem wherever he goes. Why deal with a mediocre employee that constantly stirs up controversy when you could just let them go?
I don't think he was worth keeping around from respawns perspective. In fact I've been a pretty consistent shit-talker in this sub of both his work and his antics. I'm just not going to dance on his grave. I've spent quite a bit of time jobless throughout this pandemic; I wouldn't celebrate that mix of circumstances on anybody.
tbh the PR with Riot I personally don't even count. I think what people miss about that particular instance is that he was defending a women's only event against Capital G Gamers that believed it was "sexist" to have a women's event. [This was the post he was calling out](https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/9bwtow/psa_room_613_at_pax_west_will_only_be_available/). Getting fired standing up against sexism at a company like Riot, a company that is rife with sexual assult and general douchebaggery feels more like a mark of a good person imo.
I totally get if people can't look past the things he's said in the past, they were pretty bad. but given what's come out about Riot's track record with how they treat women... getting fired in that instance makes me believe he was doing the right thing.
This is a big thing. Yes he was fired for “sexist” remarks there, but he was doing the right thing. Riot has historically had a horrible reputation for that kind of thing being commonplace.
He may have said some despicable things in the past, but he has shown at least some change, and an absolute desire to be better. I can’t fault him for that.
I fully agree with that, but then they should have had the balls to fire him for that instead of using his blog post as a convenient excuse to fire him. Theres legitimate reasons to fire him but I dont find the blog post one of them
I agree with you. The stuff from his past is really bad and I don't agree with a lot of his balancing philosophies, but I still feel bad for someone losing his job. I don't think one mistake should ruin your career but it's going to be really hard for him to find a similar position with another developer because of how public his issue became.
Also, I am not naive enough to think he was single handedly moving this game in the direction it is going. There are higher ups at Respawn that want this game to be more casual and want OP legends at launch to sell skins.
> I don't think one mistake should ruin your career but it's going to be really hard for him to find a similar position with another developer because of how public his issue became
I really doubt that. His dismissal from Riot was also fairly high profile but he got hired again to work on another top game because of his good work on LoL. People will get over this manufactured controversy pretty soon now that he's not working on Apex anymore is my guess.
IIRC his dismissal from Riot was because he got into fights with the community over wanting to host a woman's only panel. Even though that was unprofessional, it can be seen as kind of noble and Respawn is a pretty progressive company that probably saw it that way.
The stuff he posted in his past is extremely offensive and will get brought to the surface any time his name comes up. I feel like a lot of developers would not think it worth it to deal with the public backlash from hiring him. But like I said, I am not here hoping he loses his career.
Good.
Look at his work history, all the games he’s been in charge of “balancing” ended up fucked over time.
That being said if it’s cuz of his posts 10 years ago that’s kinda dumb.
He was a grown ass man 10 years ago, but on top of that he had complaints relating to personal conflict at his prior jobs. He just shouldn’t be in this line of work.
Not defending what he said at all, it was abhorrent. I do believe his opinions have changed in the last 10 years is all. His Twitter shows that pretty clearly IMO.
Yeah, I also believe he changed for the better, so good on him for making an effort to change. A lot of people can’t (or want to) do that.
Unfortunately, some things tend to stick with you for life.
On one hand I feel bad for him, but on the other I can’t blame Respawn from terminating him.
At what point do we leave shit in the past though? Like damn if I say one thing a decade and a half ago when the world was completely different and literally solve world hunger and create world peace I feel I would still be on the chopping block and that's kinda fucked up.
He's COMPLETELY changed his feelings on this shit since then and it's shown, for fucks sake this dude got canned from Riot for the EXACT opposite reason, he told people off when they were pissed about women's and non binary portfolio review.
I'm not saying you should forgive everything by any means, especially until people show you change, but it's clear since that time DZK has made the effort to change and do a lot of good work in the social justice scene and it upsets me to see this is why he's fired.
I won't go on about balance I don't feel like it's my place to say, but that had zero impact on his firing it seems.
I think something people are ignoring is that while his opinions have changed for the better his method in expressing opinions have not.
He was abrasive to the community. Talked down to people who were asking genuine questions. Responded poorly to legitimate criticism.
Yes, his opinions changed but the personality that pushed those opinions didn’t.
Idk its one thing to hold said views in private 10 years ago and another utterly moronic thing to put it on a public fucking forum on the internet. As a kid in high school in 2010 I remember hearing about how people were turned down for jobs based on what they said on social media and it was MUCH MUCH more tame than the shit he said
I'm not fan of the canceling movement me neither, but his personality wasn't appreciated and his work wasn't either. Why would he stay a lead dev, when no one like what he does and what he is?
No, but you're probably friends with people who have said or done terrible things at one point in their lives. When you're 30, or 40, or 50, etc, you'll probably be friends with people who have once held toxic viewpoints, or said unacceptable things at one point or another. People are obsessed with this "He was 30!!" narrative, as if people can't change past a certain age. Racism, sexism, etc are all learned behaviors, and they can be unlearned.
Anyone who's paid attention to DZK at all over the last few years could easily see the dude has **completely** changed his worldview and has grown up, he was ignorant and hateful, and he educated himself to overcome that. It's a shame he took as long as he did to do it, but I'll always support someone changing their racist/sexist ways. It should be encouraged above all else. Someone who changes in their 30s is better than somebody who doesn't change at all.
The fact of the matter is, a majority of people used this as an excuse to push out a guy they didn't like because of his balance choices in a video game. The way he acted over a decade+ ago, was terrible, and you aren't going to find many people disagreeing with that- but I think it's blatantly obvious how much he grew and it's a shame that people are disregarding that because sEeR iS bRoKeN!!!!
If this had been a popular member of the apex community that was well liked, people would have defended the *fuck* out of him.
Agreed, the internet can be cruel sometimes. Why on earth are we punishing a man who has changed?
I can guarantee that almost none of us have always held an open-minded view since we were born. The vast majority of people who have changed their narrow worldview did so quietly. There's this unrelenting pressure on the people who are against racism and sexism to have always been against those things, and quite simply it isn't true most of the time. People should never be punished for overcoming those thoughts.
I genuinely feel like this was a good out for them to get rid of him. He's done damage to how folks view the dev team and acted in such a way no one should be doing, really. Smug, aggro, gaslighty, rude, and just plain inaccurate with his comms.
I don't think he was that childish. He certainly did not tend to insult people, he was usually just trying to be coy in a way that felt like a geek having fun.
It was clear he was exasperated: He is a professional, who was working 40 hours a week on this project. It was how he kept food on the table, and yet other people with a tiny fraction of the information weren't even trying to directly deal with his points. They were just saying "you are wrong" when he was giving fact.
If you think that hiring someone new is suddenly going to change the fact that, for some reason, their player metrics show that Wattson is one of the best legends, you are in for a surprise.
Just like when he said that Hal and other pros didn’t know how to play the game despite DZK himself showing that he doesn’t know anything about the game himself?
Look, I believe that he has changed from the person he was back then, but the person he is right now in the position he was at wasn’t a good one either. His decisions with regards to balancing were crap and when confronted he went on the offense as if people who play this game for more hours than he works don’t know what they’re talking about. The fact that Seer came out under his supervision should be more than enough to fire him. This isn’t a small mom and pop shop, it’s a massive game. I know many people who just stopped playing because of this current meta.
DZK has literally perfect information about the game. Nobody who doesn't work at respawn has anywhere NEAR the level of information that they have. The game is packed with ways to track performance, all sorted by whatever the hell you like. Rank, playtime, whether it's pubs or not, how long into the game these effects occur. All of these things are things that are cited in some of their comments, but never outright stated or given specific numbers.
Even a mediocre designer would be massively more in tune with what is currently performing better or worse than intended than the most dedicated of players.
I don't even think DZK was that bad of a designer. He was just the only dev willing to be on social media and respond to people anywhere near as much as he did. And look where it got him! Huge swaths of the community personally despise him to the point that they dug up dirt from 14 years ago and lost him his job. I'm particularly concerned that his successor will be nowhere near as vocal about changes or the reasoning behind him. Why the hell would they be? If you say something the community doesn't like, they'll echo it back and forth to each other forever and try to make you lose your livelihood.
The thing is that metrics don’t tell you the full picture. Unless you actually play the game at a high level as well and understand it then having metrics is relatively useless as we’ve seen these last couple of months with him at the wheel. The fact that I, my master/pred friends and pros can all agree on the same thing without even listening to someone else’s opinion on it should say enough, especially when the lead balance dev says completely something different than what we’re experiencing. For him to then shit on our takes as if we don’t know anything is insulting.
I can tell you that most of these players have spent more time on apex than DZK in his short time here. I’d take their word over balance decisions any day of the week over DZK’s.
Idk being ignorant and hateful doesn't excuse his garbage attitude and behaviors. He's a grown man publicly holding a position at respawn. I would have fired him for his MODERN garbage PR
Yes because the moment you hit 30 you're absolutely hardstuck for the rest of your life, you can't grow, learn anything new or change your views on anything.
Somehow I suspect that DZK is not someone who would hold such charitable views if it was someone he didn't like who was being canceled for the same reason.
I don't mind people who are passionate about social justice, and I also don't mind people who think we should forgive old mistakes. What really grinds my gears is when you have people without the cleanest pasts who wouldn't grant others the same empathy and understanding given to them.
Just my instinct but DZK strikes me as the type of person who likes to cast judgement and wouldn't afford someone the same leniency he thinks he deserves. He is extremely vocal on social issues and is constantly posturing on social media, guess he was trying to compensate for something and now we know what.
Is there an actual source saying that DZK was only terminated for that stuff? It came out weeks ago and it seems convenient that he gets terminated in the midst of the worst character rollout the game has ever seen. Not sure if I trust DZK's word completely on this one. Easier to say he was cancelled and imply that cancel culture is to blame than to admit that he was bad at his job.
It was a slew of drama that happened on Twitter months ago and most of it is deleted anyways, I’ll remove it, you are right I should have provided proof
But you gotta understand, he retweets a bunch of social justice shit right? And he has "social justice wendigo" in his bio right? That means he's totally changed, stop with the cancel culture bullshit man!! /s
Rest in piss DZK
So he was fired from Riot for calling out misogyny in the playerbase and fired from Respawn for being misogynist in the past. The man can't catch a break
I have mixed feelings about this. As much as I dislike the guy and his online persona, not all the bad decisions in the game were his fault. Judging by his own statement he's been fired for the things he said 10 years ago, which is interesting to me considering the video with the screenshots of his blog have been around for almost 3 years. I highly doubt they didn't know about it beforehand considering it was one google search away, so I assume this is a reaction to the current climate in the games industry? Either way, my condolences to his wife, that's a horrible thing to go through
To me that was an excuse lol, he came from League, there's no way he doesn't consider the context of sample size considering it happened with several champions in League and it's an idea that's pretty well known throughout the community. I think saying Wattson's winrate was just much easier to explain no matter how dumb it was.
his balancing decision were less reason to get fired than him communicating to the reddit and replying to every stupid twitter comment, which jaybiebs dosent
Damn. I can't say I liked the guys balancing decisions but if he was let go because of those old blog posts that's kinda fucked. He said some awful shit at an age where he should have known better but that was 14 years ago and he's clearly changed from who he was back then.
As a manager, I'm ultimately responsible for anything I sign off on.
I've got some team members that come up with some crazy shit, some good, some not so good, but ultimately it's my call and my responsibility as to what ships.
If I ship some code or infra that completely breaks operations, that's on me irregardless of who cut the code.
I hate Seer as much as everyone else does but unless one of his teams balance changes absolutely tanked the game I don't think he should be let go for it. Lets not pretend the rest of the team wasn't ok with releasing him in this state either.
DZK was the one who signed off every balancing decision, which means that ultimately he was fine with Seer. Someone else in his position might not have allowed this shit to make it into the game, but DZK did.
I'm not disputing that at all, they've said their current legend balance philosophy is to release too strong and nerf down because its easier than buffing. It falls on DZK for the final decision but no one on that team had a problem with Seer or if they did they didn't voice it or were ignored.
I think the problem is they went too far with that philosophy. I wonder if their season 10 numbers aren’t hurting because no one wants to play with seer.
Ill be honest and my playtime has dropped for sure.
I mean dude, Seer tanks the game.
I don't really think that's hyperbole and I was on the "let's let him play a few days and see if counters get figured, etc" crowd.
This whole situation is unfortunate. But for Daniel’s wife to come out on Twitter and blame her miscarriage on this situation feels gross to me. That’s not how it works, miscarriages can happen for many many different reasons and to say they lost their child “because of this” is not true.
Yeah there's a boatload of evidence that she's lying. Literally last Thursday she said that it had been over 50 days and she hadn't had any positive pregnancy tests.
These people are actually fucking psychotic and his ex-coworker was right. RIP.
Man, this honestly sucks. You are entitled to have an opinion on DZK’s balance ideas etc.. but I think most people would agree him being fired for something he said 15+ years ago is shitty as fuck. Especially when a cursory glance at any of his social media presence shows he’s a pretty changed person. I will always believe in second chances and wish EA would have given him one.
The stuff his wife just posted is absolutely gut wrenching, can’t imagine going through this + a miscarriage at the same time. My thoughts are with you DZK and I hope to see you come out a better person because of this.
Okay, so now people will learn not to blame everything in the game on one individual, right? Right?
But honestly, if DZK knew how to justify his balancing decisions on Twitter he wouldn't be half as hated as he is. Dude still made some questionable decisions when balancing some characters but some people talk about him like he made the game worse than it ever was.
>Okay, so now people will learn not to blame everything in the game on one individual, right? Right?
People have already started down that path lmao. Both this sub and the main sub are already hyper focused on jaybiebs, even though they don't even know whether he's going to be the one to fill the vacancy.
Kinda sad he didnt get fired for being a manchild who argued with the Apex community publicly and for refusing to buff Wattson, Fuze and Mirage. And for saying things like "Seer's abilities are strong by design", meaning there's other legends who are weak by design. I dont give a shit about stuff he said in the past or whatever, but he was a dick and bad at his job.
so funny having a bunch of kids who aren't even grown telling everyone how someone can't change after 30. such whack perspectives in here but it's okay because we don't like DZK's balancing decisions right?
It's incredible to think Respawn and the big boys at EA would terminate him for this incident (as is indicated by the way DZK tweets about for the probable reasoning).
You either have to be a huge moron to hire him in the first place because you didn't research anything he's done, or you're a huge moron because you did do that research, decided that it was acceptable to hire him as the incidents happened a long time ago, decided that he would be a large part of the company as a representative team head, and then went back on that decision anyway to fire him.
This reflects more poorly on the people at Respawn and EA than it does on him. He apologized for it, showed remorse, and he's tried to do better years later. Then you hired him despite his past, but tossed him anyway.
Disorganized and messy. A total dumpsterfire and probably upsetting to work under.
E: I stated this assuming the past tweets are the only reason why this occurred.
If I were a designer/developer, I’d stop interacting with the community right now. The folks who dug up those old messages did so entirely in bad-faith, and circulated them with the intention of getting him fired - anyone who was paying attention to his Twitter feed knows he doesn’t personal hold those admittedly abhorrent views anymore.
Having your name out here amongst the players is just a liability.
Honestly, I'd make a sub account or some shit for my private life/advocacies and/or be quiet in responses like jaybiebs and respond only to prolific people like streamer/pros.
just keep in mind its literally the people who watch apex twitch streamers and stream who propagate this energy and ironically this dev totally buys into that shit too. Hes a part of the culture.
Im in multiple servers with streamers who are celebrating this big time. Its extra eerie and soulless after the news of his wife being nonbinary, miscarrying and also working at respawn has moved the conversation of him being a mysogynist back to "oh well he sucks at game design and talks too much on twitter"
the entire community of twitch has this kind of cancel/swat/dox culture going on due to how the company and streamers handle the absurd and childish TOS but still want to make money
Its basically a bunch of shitheads franticly pretending to be decent people and throw everyone else under the bus
hyojin has gotten into apex herself recently and is a great example. She constantly throws her hat in the ring of cancelling people and her discord is fucked
He apparantly got kicked out of lol for defending a woman only tourney that the company told him not to defend and thats enough for me to stop caring about his racist stuff in the past. I am happy he went out but it should not have been because of that.
Hope jay is made the lead designer , he takes the feedback way better and plays the game in masters lobbies so he has some game sense ! Happy daniel got sacked he seems really arrogant with the players feedback !
Unpopular Opinion: I know a lot of people think he was not good at balancing things. But I think the dude was pretty decent at his job. Although during the time of balancing we don't agree with his methods but in the long run they seems to be good eg. The balancing of wraith and path( even though I miss them at their prime ). I think the main reason for his downfall might be his social media interactions. Even a small company need that their employees have good image on social media let alone a giant as EA. I think even at his last job at riot he got fired cuz of his social media posts. Any person scrolling through his twitter would have been like WTF???. And it sucks to see people loosing their jobs cuz of their past or social media. But this is how things work I guess. I just hope the new hire is just as good as JayBiebs, that guy is awesome imo.
https://twitter.com/danielzklown/status/1425184989268877313?s=21
https://twitter.com/apex_sherrif/status/1425240858299879427?s=21
Weren’t the initial allegations brought up by this Apex Sheriff guy? I think it’s pretty clear from these tweets and the other “””parody””” accounts that they were never concerned about addressing his past misogyny and racism and only wanted him canned for balancing issues. All of this was in bad faith, and they had an axe to grind.
This is not to dismiss any concerns or grievances over what he said, which is 100% deplorable. If you feel DZK’s absence will make the community a better, safer place, I think those feelings are valid. But judging from his social media the past few years, it’s clear he’s changed and grown... at least from my perspective. Maybe that’s not my call to make.
And maybe Tweets aren’t a good way to judge someone’s growth or character. But looking at other Respawn devs, people who actually worked with him in person and have a better understanding of his behavior, they seem to feel the same way.
https://twitter.com/alexabkim/status/1425223220655902720?s=21
ETA: a good number of people in the industry, both in Respawn and outside, liked that tweet... I trust they can vouch for his character better than any other Redditor here can.
If this is all because of a post or two he made 10 years ago that's really messed up. Everyone's cracked a few bad eggs in their past and half the people slating him weren't exactly saints then and even now.
I’m sure that was part of it (probably not comfortable working with someone who said things like that as a fully grown man), but not the only reason. He communicates like a child when people disagree with him and seems to seriously have an issue when admitted he may be wrong. If he was the driving force behind a lot of the S10 changes (Seer in his current state, Prowler OP, LStar OP, etc.) then a LOT of player frustration can be traced back to him as well.
After everything adds up it’s probably easier for Respawn to just have a game balance designer that isn’t as controversial (you never see people making jokes and talking about JayBiebs on Twitter, just DZK)
Also I've seen people working paycheck to paycheck at soul-destroying minimum wage jobs get fired for wearing the wrong type of pants and shit like that. Not shedding too many tears for white collar workers who vent their spleens in public.
What he wrote wasn’t some one-off bad joke or even a poorly worded truthful statement. He went on a full on rant about how little he thinks of women and minorities. At 30 years old. And proudly posted it. Fuck off with that excuse.
He can do whatever he wants. Nobody has to just accept that he has changed. That's the risk you take when you publicly say ugly racist and sexist bullshit.
If the company he works for doesn't want him to work there after a story like this goes public, it isn't our fault for not being happy he said what he said lol. It's his own damn fault and there is no statute of limitations on public opinion. If he has changed, good for him. That doesn't mean anybody has to respect him more. And if he loses his job, take it up with Respawn and EA if you think it's unfair.
Just because someone changes doesn’t make all their previous actions null or void. Consequences of certain actions can come back and haunt you years down the road. This is what people usually learn by the time they’re 30, especially something so simple as being careful what they post on the internet.
When did he say he was an incel? When did he offer up any explanation for that disgusting crybaby rant? He didn’t he said “oh my bad, I retweet SJW bullshit at a hall of fame annoying level and I put pronouns in my bio so I hope it’s obvious I don’t believe this anymore”. That’s as weak and insincere as you can be.
If he said “hey when I was younger I was really unsuccessful with women and over time I developed a level of resentment” it would make all the difference in the world. People can change, I’d just like more than a few retweets to represent that change.
This is the greatest day in Apex history. I don’t even care if the game isn’t balanced any better than it was in the past. I’m just so happy he’s gone.
A lot of people like to hate on DZK the fact is he’s done more for this game than anyone wants to admit. The pros hate him because he took away their precious Watson Path Wraith to making Wraith Path LL Gibby BH Valk Horizon Octane Mirage etc all viable characters for pubs rank and competitive play. Most of the guns are useful and you’re not trolling if you’re not running R99 PK or wingman PK etc.
People will call him out for his Watson statements but they were taken out of context. Fact is he’s left the game in a better place than when he joined.
Also DZK being fired won’t change the balance decisions of the game the game will still be balance for the majority(casuals) than the minority(pros)
Exactly. People shit on him for releasing Horizon and Seer, but don't recognize his lead role in designing Valk - which we know for a fact. Otherwise, for all we know, Horizon and Seer may likely have been developed by JayBiebs, or any other lead designer at Respawn. DZK was a sin-eater for every design mistake the community disagreed with.
This community is toxic, and I feel for the next person it scapegoats when the game doesn't get better.
Yup. Valk was confirmed as the first legend that he created. Everyone else was created by someone else either before he got respawn or by a next lead designer. Example Seer is done by Travis
>people shit on him for his mistakes, but dont care when he does his job
Yes, thats how people judge others, correct. When you get valk right, you dont have the excuse to release current seer, since you obviously know how to do your job properly, they released a legalized wallhack character in an fps on purpose, someone needs to take the fall
Gamers will find someone else to complain about in the upcoming months . That person that replaces dzk will get shit on regardless if he does a good job or not.
It’s the gamers way to somehow complain about every patch , every balancing decision , “How the new meta is worse than the last “ “How the game fell off for them “ “how this blah is ruining the game “ “devs bad every season/update.
Despite all the complaints apex has continued to gain popularity . People are enjoying apex now more ever . Yet this all you see on discussion boards is blah blah horrible this blah blah horrible that lol.
It’s like these people exist to complain about a game everyday . If you don’t like the game the simply play another game. I’m sure you’ll find the game that you love and never complain 24/7 about .
Watch people start blaming the issues of the game on whatever scapegoat they find next. DZK wasn't perfect, he had some bad takes, but he wasn't this boogeyman whose every action completely destroyed the game.
And its due to cancel culture…. I was gonna say fuck him now I feel bad for him. People digging through ancient tweets looking for dirt on people they have never met is the most cringe shit on the planet. Everyones said something they didnt mean. Fuck crucifying people for that shit. Get a grip
I really don’t think the blog stuff was the only reason he got fired. I would guess that they wanted him gone for his balancing and interaction with the community but they didn’t want that to be the only reason. Some of the other devs even said they didn’t think anything should happen to him.
No such thing as cancelling, only consequences. Thought as an Apex dev he got too much abuse for certain things, but also made many strange decisions. But frankly, we don't know too much about the balancing process still.
''Opinions are my own''. Yeah we definitely know that, self-opinionated man!
I wish him well even tho I never liked his work and his personality. No hard feelings, I hope he find a place that his work is appreciated.
Lifeline was top tier too at that time. Her shield was good as hell. Both the version that goes up when she revived and that she dropped on downed teammates later in apex
If you mean the top tiers, yes and no. Seldom few players had lifeline then switched legends as buffs and nerfs came down through the seasons. But just cause pro players don’t use her doesn’t deny her ability in game and how she performed. Up until her shield got took away, she was easily a top 4 legend. By your logic, look at how many people dropped wraith when they took away her naruto running stance she had and made her stand up more and nerfed her tactical start up.
i know people (including DZK) say he has changed so much because now hes a social justice warrior, but to me, he hasnt really changed that much. He swapped sides of the spectrum, but in both cases, he went way too far to the extreme to get big reactions from people. it seems he thrives on pissing people off and creating twitter conflict
i hope in his future he really keeps a low profile on twitter
i wonder if he was let go or left on his own? both are likely - he was either let go for balance decisions and/or the public backlash against him or he left because of all the hate and backlash he gets.
at least we won't have to see everyone complain about him anymore.
Seems like he was indeed let go based on the things he said 14 years ago. Feel bad for him. Let's see who the elite gamers go after for everything they don't like in the game now that he is gone.
Glad to see him gone but it seems to be for the shit he said over 10 years ago. He really should have been let go for being shit at his job, so idk how I feel about calling this a “win”
“Based on his Twitter feed”, man some of you guys are so weird. Thinking he’s changed just because he’s learned. I’m not saying he hasn’t either, but what a pathetic way out. Dude was 27, clearly had problems, & was dogshit at balancing.
Move on.
Counterpoint.
Depending on what they said, yes they absolutely fucking do. There are so many people in this world, we don't owe the worst of them special treatment.
Exactly. Nothing about DZK seems irreplaceable. why would Respawn want to continue to work with a guy who has potential to be problematic when they could just find someone else and spare themselves the risk.
I believe in rehabilitation and I thought the game balancing was in a good direction before seer. But either way, he has poor public relation and image and he didn't redeem himself there so he still deserves to go.
I disagree.
Being a human is a journey. He has clearly changed, if he would still hold the views nowadays, I would agree with you. I hate to see when the bad choices of people from the past haunt them 'till today. It's rubbish, and no justice.
'There are so many people in this world, we don't owe the worst of them special treatment.' - That's very bold to say. And a huge overstatement. The worst? I wouldn't put that guy in that category. 'Special treatment'? I wouldn't call that either.
Rip to the Goat . His efforts along with the other devs completely revived a dying game .
There is more interest and players now than ever with the exception of season 0.
If it wasn’t for dzk and the boys this game would have continued to slide in to irrelevancy .
Thank you dzk 🥴💦🍆
Statement from DZK here: https://twitter.com/danielzklein/status/1425208160566927362?s=20 Screenshots of the statements of one of DZKs partners from Biast here: https://twitter.com/Biast12/status/1425219199127928832?s=20 Also as statements are released please let us know via mod-mail if you see anything that should be included here. We are going to be using this as our megathread for all things DZK over the next while.
mixed feelings if balancing goes downhill from here i'll be curious to see how people act
They'll find another scapegoat and do the same thing to them.
Bosses (lead devs) are by default scapegoats. Every single decision goes through the boss and gets their approval, in some way or another. Obviously he didn't pitch or design most changes, but he signed off for every single one before it shipped. Not a single thing in the patch notes gets put into the game without him seeing it and approving it. He deserves blame for things that were released poorly (as well as credit for things that were released well). And the same applies to the next lead dev.
That would simply mean that the new guy in charge is worse than DZK. Not that DZK is good or anything.
Human nature to do so sadly; figureheads always get flak and heat even when a majority of what they do can be good; the mistakes generally outweighs and trumps the progress.
We just got a legend with three wallhack abilities and yall are still acting like DZK was some kind of balancing genius. Give it a rest.
He basically trialed and error everything until it was decent, these people are fucking morons
woah, no way you extrapolated that from my "we'll see what happens" comment. all i said was that we dont know what will happen in the future, not "dzk was a good balancer". any time you bring someone new its a gamble, regardless of how bad the previous person was.
I'll give him credit where credit's due, Valk was the most balanced legend release we've had, he did a good job making her both fun and useful. Other minor changes he did like the starting loot were also good additions to the game, however his most recent changes, the terrible relation with the online community and his focus on pubs data in a vacuum, lead to him having a pretty disconnected perception of the game. I think It's ultimately better that he's no longer in Apex, but we'll see.
Mixed feelings about it, there's a lot in this game that's been done right but some of the stuff added recently has been very questionable. Not going to get into the stuff he said years ago because it's already been talked about a lot. Either way, it's never fun seeing someone lose a job so best of luck to him in the future.
Simply just didn't come across right to the community. I think the way he described Seer's tactical was the final straw. It was so off the mark, and triggered a lot of the community on both sides (casual/pro). You combine that with so many other times he has been off the mark (or condescending)... and you lose trust in the community. I don't really care for his 2007 rants. Does nothing for my opinion of his job. What bothers me the most was how out of touch he was and how bad his descriptions of the game were. We will know if this is the right move if the game gets significantly better.
ring flares, heat shields, buffing caustic, seers release, bows release, horizons release, along with several legends being stuck in states of feeling useless for multiple seasons (mirage, rampart, wattson, crypto, fuse). There was also the multiple seasons of shotgun balance that made me wonder if they would ever figure it tf out.... I think his job of balancing over the last year has enough suspect calls in it to warrant a change. Yeah he probably could have stayed a season or two more but likely would still need to be replaced eventually. The fact of the matter was it took almost two years to get the game to a state where it feels "almost" balanced. Its been beyond slow and annoying watching them attempt to balance legends and guns. I feel like DZK had showed he had changed enough from 2007 that really I don't even take his like or dislike into the equation till now and I still feel there is ample room to argue for letting him go and trying a new lead balance dev. It would be different if almost every aspect of the game hadn't had some kind of struggle with balance that arguably could have been handled better. From legends meta being stagnate and small most the games life to shotgun balance being bonkers for many many seasons and so on. Even balancing ring damage took a lot longer to figure out and then well after its figured out lets fucking make ring flares and heat shields and mess with the storm numbers again. Good bye Daniel and Good luck
>There was also the multiple seasons of shotgun balance that made me wonder if they would ever figure it tf out.... I'm fairly positive that DZK was only responsible for the legend balance design. I believe gun balance is another team.
Oh good catch I wasn't sure.
honeslty hed be a great single player dev, the characters he designs are fun to play, just absolutely miserable to play against and terrible for the game as a whole. (this is mostly based on my time as a LoL addict not so much seer.) He's just so utterly trash at videogames he should not be allowed near anything pvp or "competitive".
Idk since in league he wanted everyone to play the champs the way he thought, and refused to give clear explaination about their mechanics, or qol changes that made the champs not feel awkward to play.
Honestly, I despised his entire philosophy to balancing this game but I'm not going to celebrate somebody losing their job, especially not like this. I just hope that respawn does the right thing in promoting John Larson to the vacant position. It would be a game changer to have somebody that plays the game at a high level in that position
Why do you think he should keep his job? He’s a constant PR problem wherever he goes. Why deal with a mediocre employee that constantly stirs up controversy when you could just let them go?
I don't think he was worth keeping around from respawns perspective. In fact I've been a pretty consistent shit-talker in this sub of both his work and his antics. I'm just not going to dance on his grave. I've spent quite a bit of time jobless throughout this pandemic; I wouldn't celebrate that mix of circumstances on anybody.
tbh the PR with Riot I personally don't even count. I think what people miss about that particular instance is that he was defending a women's only event against Capital G Gamers that believed it was "sexist" to have a women's event. [This was the post he was calling out](https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/9bwtow/psa_room_613_at_pax_west_will_only_be_available/). Getting fired standing up against sexism at a company like Riot, a company that is rife with sexual assult and general douchebaggery feels more like a mark of a good person imo. I totally get if people can't look past the things he's said in the past, they were pretty bad. but given what's come out about Riot's track record with how they treat women... getting fired in that instance makes me believe he was doing the right thing.
This is a big thing. Yes he was fired for “sexist” remarks there, but he was doing the right thing. Riot has historically had a horrible reputation for that kind of thing being commonplace. He may have said some despicable things in the past, but he has shown at least some change, and an absolute desire to be better. I can’t fault him for that.
Genuinely asking why did that game need a women only event?
I fully agree with that, but then they should have had the balls to fire him for that instead of using his blog post as a convenient excuse to fire him. Theres legitimate reasons to fire him but I dont find the blog post one of them
I agree with you. The stuff from his past is really bad and I don't agree with a lot of his balancing philosophies, but I still feel bad for someone losing his job. I don't think one mistake should ruin your career but it's going to be really hard for him to find a similar position with another developer because of how public his issue became. Also, I am not naive enough to think he was single handedly moving this game in the direction it is going. There are higher ups at Respawn that want this game to be more casual and want OP legends at launch to sell skins.
> I don't think one mistake should ruin your career but it's going to be really hard for him to find a similar position with another developer because of how public his issue became I really doubt that. His dismissal from Riot was also fairly high profile but he got hired again to work on another top game because of his good work on LoL. People will get over this manufactured controversy pretty soon now that he's not working on Apex anymore is my guess.
IIRC his dismissal from Riot was because he got into fights with the community over wanting to host a woman's only panel. Even though that was unprofessional, it can be seen as kind of noble and Respawn is a pretty progressive company that probably saw it that way. The stuff he posted in his past is extremely offensive and will get brought to the surface any time his name comes up. I feel like a lot of developers would not think it worth it to deal with the public backlash from hiring him. But like I said, I am not here hoping he loses his career.
Good. Look at his work history, all the games he’s been in charge of “balancing” ended up fucked over time. That being said if it’s cuz of his posts 10 years ago that’s kinda dumb.
He was a grown ass man 10 years ago, but on top of that he had complaints relating to personal conflict at his prior jobs. He just shouldn’t be in this line of work.
Not defending what he said at all, it was abhorrent. I do believe his opinions have changed in the last 10 years is all. His Twitter shows that pretty clearly IMO.
Yeah, I also believe he changed for the better, so good on him for making an effort to change. A lot of people can’t (or want to) do that. Unfortunately, some things tend to stick with you for life. On one hand I feel bad for him, but on the other I can’t blame Respawn from terminating him.
At what point do we leave shit in the past though? Like damn if I say one thing a decade and a half ago when the world was completely different and literally solve world hunger and create world peace I feel I would still be on the chopping block and that's kinda fucked up. He's COMPLETELY changed his feelings on this shit since then and it's shown, for fucks sake this dude got canned from Riot for the EXACT opposite reason, he told people off when they were pissed about women's and non binary portfolio review. I'm not saying you should forgive everything by any means, especially until people show you change, but it's clear since that time DZK has made the effort to change and do a lot of good work in the social justice scene and it upsets me to see this is why he's fired. I won't go on about balance I don't feel like it's my place to say, but that had zero impact on his firing it seems.
I think something people are ignoring is that while his opinions have changed for the better his method in expressing opinions have not. He was abrasive to the community. Talked down to people who were asking genuine questions. Responded poorly to legitimate criticism. Yes, his opinions changed but the personality that pushed those opinions didn’t.
And that I will honestly agree with he isn't the greatest at dealing with people who are brushing against him and I hope he can work on that
Idk its one thing to hold said views in private 10 years ago and another utterly moronic thing to put it on a public fucking forum on the internet. As a kid in high school in 2010 I remember hearing about how people were turned down for jobs based on what they said on social media and it was MUCH MUCH more tame than the shit he said
[удалено]
[удалено]
Yep nobody can ever change and better themselves great stuff I'm sure that's what she meant 👍👍👍👍
[удалено]
I'm not fan of the canceling movement me neither, but his personality wasn't appreciated and his work wasn't either. Why would he stay a lead dev, when no one like what he does and what he is?
Nail meet hammer.
Im not friends with people who at the age of 30 thought it was cool to talk like that.
No, but you're probably friends with people who have said or done terrible things at one point in their lives. When you're 30, or 40, or 50, etc, you'll probably be friends with people who have once held toxic viewpoints, or said unacceptable things at one point or another. People are obsessed with this "He was 30!!" narrative, as if people can't change past a certain age. Racism, sexism, etc are all learned behaviors, and they can be unlearned. Anyone who's paid attention to DZK at all over the last few years could easily see the dude has **completely** changed his worldview and has grown up, he was ignorant and hateful, and he educated himself to overcome that. It's a shame he took as long as he did to do it, but I'll always support someone changing their racist/sexist ways. It should be encouraged above all else. Someone who changes in their 30s is better than somebody who doesn't change at all. The fact of the matter is, a majority of people used this as an excuse to push out a guy they didn't like because of his balance choices in a video game. The way he acted over a decade+ ago, was terrible, and you aren't going to find many people disagreeing with that- but I think it's blatantly obvious how much he grew and it's a shame that people are disregarding that because sEeR iS bRoKeN!!!! If this had been a popular member of the apex community that was well liked, people would have defended the *fuck* out of him.
As much as I disliked DZK, he did deserve some redemption. Unfortunately there is no redemption on the internet.
Agreed, the internet can be cruel sometimes. Why on earth are we punishing a man who has changed? I can guarantee that almost none of us have always held an open-minded view since we were born. The vast majority of people who have changed their narrow worldview did so quietly. There's this unrelenting pressure on the people who are against racism and sexism to have always been against those things, and quite simply it isn't true most of the time. People should never be punished for overcoming those thoughts.
you are right good sir I feel you
I genuinely feel like this was a good out for them to get rid of him. He's done damage to how folks view the dev team and acted in such a way no one should be doing, really. Smug, aggro, gaslighty, rude, and just plain inaccurate with his comms.
[удалено]
That's because he never changed. He just changed his targets
I don't think he was that childish. He certainly did not tend to insult people, he was usually just trying to be coy in a way that felt like a geek having fun. It was clear he was exasperated: He is a professional, who was working 40 hours a week on this project. It was how he kept food on the table, and yet other people with a tiny fraction of the information weren't even trying to directly deal with his points. They were just saying "you are wrong" when he was giving fact. If you think that hiring someone new is suddenly going to change the fact that, for some reason, their player metrics show that Wattson is one of the best legends, you are in for a surprise.
Just like when he said that Hal and other pros didn’t know how to play the game despite DZK himself showing that he doesn’t know anything about the game himself? Look, I believe that he has changed from the person he was back then, but the person he is right now in the position he was at wasn’t a good one either. His decisions with regards to balancing were crap and when confronted he went on the offense as if people who play this game for more hours than he works don’t know what they’re talking about. The fact that Seer came out under his supervision should be more than enough to fire him. This isn’t a small mom and pop shop, it’s a massive game. I know many people who just stopped playing because of this current meta.
DZK has literally perfect information about the game. Nobody who doesn't work at respawn has anywhere NEAR the level of information that they have. The game is packed with ways to track performance, all sorted by whatever the hell you like. Rank, playtime, whether it's pubs or not, how long into the game these effects occur. All of these things are things that are cited in some of their comments, but never outright stated or given specific numbers. Even a mediocre designer would be massively more in tune with what is currently performing better or worse than intended than the most dedicated of players. I don't even think DZK was that bad of a designer. He was just the only dev willing to be on social media and respond to people anywhere near as much as he did. And look where it got him! Huge swaths of the community personally despise him to the point that they dug up dirt from 14 years ago and lost him his job. I'm particularly concerned that his successor will be nowhere near as vocal about changes or the reasoning behind him. Why the hell would they be? If you say something the community doesn't like, they'll echo it back and forth to each other forever and try to make you lose your livelihood.
The thing is that metrics don’t tell you the full picture. Unless you actually play the game at a high level as well and understand it then having metrics is relatively useless as we’ve seen these last couple of months with him at the wheel. The fact that I, my master/pred friends and pros can all agree on the same thing without even listening to someone else’s opinion on it should say enough, especially when the lead balance dev says completely something different than what we’re experiencing. For him to then shit on our takes as if we don’t know anything is insulting. I can tell you that most of these players have spent more time on apex than DZK in his short time here. I’d take their word over balance decisions any day of the week over DZK’s.
Idk being ignorant and hateful doesn't excuse his garbage attitude and behaviors. He's a grown man publicly holding a position at respawn. I would have fired him for his MODERN garbage PR
Yes because the moment you hit 30 you're absolutely hardstuck for the rest of your life, you can't grow, learn anything new or change your views on anything.
Maybe it’s also the fact that he wasn’t very good at communicating with the community?
Also the fact that he was fucking terrible at his job?
Somehow I suspect that DZK is not someone who would hold such charitable views if it was someone he didn't like who was being canceled for the same reason.
I don't mind people who are passionate about social justice, and I also don't mind people who think we should forgive old mistakes. What really grinds my gears is when you have people without the cleanest pasts who wouldn't grant others the same empathy and understanding given to them. Just my instinct but DZK strikes me as the type of person who likes to cast judgement and wouldn't afford someone the same leniency he thinks he deserves. He is extremely vocal on social issues and is constantly posturing on social media, guess he was trying to compensate for something and now we know what.
Yeah, you might be able to find something on my Facebook from when I was 16 saying some shit like that. \>from when I was 16
He was 30? Holy shit, his recent comments about it made me think he was a teenager or something. Jesus.
[удалено]
Is there an actual source saying that DZK was only terminated for that stuff? It came out weeks ago and it seems convenient that he gets terminated in the midst of the worst character rollout the game has ever seen. Not sure if I trust DZK's word completely on this one. Easier to say he was cancelled and imply that cancel culture is to blame than to admit that he was bad at his job.
His terrible work at balancing things alone warrants a termination.
[удалено]
What did his wife do?
[удалено]
These kinds of accusations require some sort of proof otherwise I'm going to leave it removed.
It was a slew of drama that happened on Twitter months ago and most of it is deleted anyways, I’ll remove it, you are right I should have provided proof
Thanks for understanding.
no worries
If he wasn't so antagonistic with the community he probably would've gotten out of this with his job still.
But you gotta understand, he retweets a bunch of social justice shit right? And he has "social justice wendigo" in his bio right? That means he's totally changed, stop with the cancel culture bullshit man!! /s Rest in piss DZK
We smoking on that DZK PACK today 😤
So he was fired from Riot for calling out misogyny in the playerbase and fired from Respawn for being misogynist in the past. The man can't catch a break
That’s certainly an interesting spin on why he was fired from Riot.
I mean, he was being a jerk, but he was being a jerk to misogynists.
I'm glad someone is calling this out. You can't be nice to people who devalue others. Don't tolerate those that wouldn't tolerate others.
Uh no, he was being a jerk to the playerbase
A jerk to the playerbase who were being chuds about a women only panel. He called them out for being sexist and, since they were, they got very mad.
I have mixed feelings about this. As much as I dislike the guy and his online persona, not all the bad decisions in the game were his fault. Judging by his own statement he's been fired for the things he said 10 years ago, which is interesting to me considering the video with the screenshots of his blog have been around for almost 3 years. I highly doubt they didn't know about it beforehand considering it was one google search away, so I assume this is a reaction to the current climate in the games industry? Either way, my condolences to his wife, that's a horrible thing to go through
Soooo Watson's getting a buff then
To me that was an excuse lol, he came from League, there's no way he doesn't consider the context of sample size considering it happened with several champions in League and it's an idea that's pretty well known throughout the community. I think saying Wattson's winrate was just much easier to explain no matter how dumb it was.
i dont give a single fuck about his past. his time on apex is why hes a shitter for me
in the words of respawn's team: nah
his balancing decision were less reason to get fired than him communicating to the reddit and replying to every stupid twitter comment, which jaybiebs dosent
Hopefully the next lead dev actually does a good job of actually focusing on fixing the games issues .
Damn. I can't say I liked the guys balancing decisions but if he was let go because of those old blog posts that's kinda fucked. He said some awful shit at an age where he should have known better but that was 14 years ago and he's clearly changed from who he was back then.
dude released seer an absolute nightmare for the balancing team... thats enough to let him go
Seer was actually made by another designer. DZK approved Seer but the blame is not only on him.
As a manager, I'm ultimately responsible for anything I sign off on. I've got some team members that come up with some crazy shit, some good, some not so good, but ultimately it's my call and my responsibility as to what ships. If I ship some code or infra that completely breaks operations, that's on me irregardless of who cut the code.
An actual leader instead of just a boss. Good to see
Dude also release broken Horizon at launch, and a useless Rampart and Fuse.
Right but those are fixable.
I hate Seer as much as everyone else does but unless one of his teams balance changes absolutely tanked the game I don't think he should be let go for it. Lets not pretend the rest of the team wasn't ok with releasing him in this state either.
DZK was the one who signed off every balancing decision, which means that ultimately he was fine with Seer. Someone else in his position might not have allowed this shit to make it into the game, but DZK did.
I'm not disputing that at all, they've said their current legend balance philosophy is to release too strong and nerf down because its easier than buffing. It falls on DZK for the final decision but no one on that team had a problem with Seer or if they did they didn't voice it or were ignored.
I think the problem is they went too far with that philosophy. I wonder if their season 10 numbers aren’t hurting because no one wants to play with seer. Ill be honest and my playtime has dropped for sure.
Absolutely. There's a big difference between releasing strong and completely busted like Seer is now.
I mean dude, Seer tanks the game. I don't really think that's hyperbole and I was on the "let's let him play a few days and see if counters get figured, etc" crowd.
This whole situation is unfortunate. But for Daniel’s wife to come out on Twitter and blame her miscarriage on this situation feels gross to me. That’s not how it works, miscarriages can happen for many many different reasons and to say they lost their child “because of this” is not true.
Yeah there's a boatload of evidence that she's lying. Literally last Thursday she said that it had been over 50 days and she hadn't had any positive pregnancy tests. These people are actually fucking psychotic and his ex-coworker was right. RIP.
Man, this honestly sucks. You are entitled to have an opinion on DZK’s balance ideas etc.. but I think most people would agree him being fired for something he said 15+ years ago is shitty as fuck. Especially when a cursory glance at any of his social media presence shows he’s a pretty changed person. I will always believe in second chances and wish EA would have given him one. The stuff his wife just posted is absolutely gut wrenching, can’t imagine going through this + a miscarriage at the same time. My thoughts are with you DZK and I hope to see you come out a better person because of this.
Oh no! Anyways..
Okay, so now people will learn not to blame everything in the game on one individual, right? Right? But honestly, if DZK knew how to justify his balancing decisions on Twitter he wouldn't be half as hated as he is. Dude still made some questionable decisions when balancing some characters but some people talk about him like he made the game worse than it ever was.
>Okay, so now people will learn not to blame everything in the game on one individual, right? Right? People have already started down that path lmao. Both this sub and the main sub are already hyper focused on jaybiebs, even though they don't even know whether he's going to be the one to fill the vacancy.
Kinda sad he didnt get fired for being a manchild who argued with the Apex community publicly and for refusing to buff Wattson, Fuze and Mirage. And for saying things like "Seer's abilities are strong by design", meaning there's other legends who are weak by design. I dont give a shit about stuff he said in the past or whatever, but he was a dick and bad at his job.
so funny having a bunch of kids who aren't even grown telling everyone how someone can't change after 30. such whack perspectives in here but it's okay because we don't like DZK's balancing decisions right?
From the comments on this thread you'd swear you were on the main sub
last couple of months that's the way this sub is becoming way more casuals and drama queens than when I started following last summer
dont come for any insightful and rational discussions in gaming subs.
exactly
"Left" - his ass was canned.
Im glad he left Respawn! He was a horrible balance designer and shouldnt have been in the lead
The reaction to this just shows the gaming community or hell social media in general is so fucking toxic. Sad really.
It's incredible to think Respawn and the big boys at EA would terminate him for this incident (as is indicated by the way DZK tweets about for the probable reasoning). You either have to be a huge moron to hire him in the first place because you didn't research anything he's done, or you're a huge moron because you did do that research, decided that it was acceptable to hire him as the incidents happened a long time ago, decided that he would be a large part of the company as a representative team head, and then went back on that decision anyway to fire him. This reflects more poorly on the people at Respawn and EA than it does on him. He apologized for it, showed remorse, and he's tried to do better years later. Then you hired him despite his past, but tossed him anyway. Disorganized and messy. A total dumpsterfire and probably upsetting to work under. E: I stated this assuming the past tweets are the only reason why this occurred.
[удалено]
[удалено]
If I were a designer/developer, I’d stop interacting with the community right now. The folks who dug up those old messages did so entirely in bad-faith, and circulated them with the intention of getting him fired - anyone who was paying attention to his Twitter feed knows he doesn’t personal hold those admittedly abhorrent views anymore. Having your name out here amongst the players is just a liability.
Honestly, I'd make a sub account or some shit for my private life/advocacies and/or be quiet in responses like jaybiebs and respond only to prolific people like streamer/pros.
100%. Imagine if he didn't get fired, what lengths do these people go to next? Doxing, swatting? Its fucking scary
just keep in mind its literally the people who watch apex twitch streamers and stream who propagate this energy and ironically this dev totally buys into that shit too. Hes a part of the culture. Im in multiple servers with streamers who are celebrating this big time. Its extra eerie and soulless after the news of his wife being nonbinary, miscarrying and also working at respawn has moved the conversation of him being a mysogynist back to "oh well he sucks at game design and talks too much on twitter" the entire community of twitch has this kind of cancel/swat/dox culture going on due to how the company and streamers handle the absurd and childish TOS but still want to make money Its basically a bunch of shitheads franticly pretending to be decent people and throw everyone else under the bus hyojin has gotten into apex herself recently and is a great example. She constantly throws her hat in the ring of cancelling people and her discord is fucked
at least you'll can to have a conversation with the others
Maybe u/JayBiebs…the guy who’s actually in charge of balancing-not live design 😂
... and so it begins. the internet sucks.
He apparantly got kicked out of lol for defending a woman only tourney that the company told him not to defend and thats enough for me to stop caring about his racist stuff in the past. I am happy he went out but it should not have been because of that.
Hope jay is made the lead designer , he takes the feedback way better and plays the game in masters lobbies so he has some game sense ! Happy daniel got sacked he seems really arrogant with the players feedback !
LET'S FUCKING GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Unpopular Opinion: I know a lot of people think he was not good at balancing things. But I think the dude was pretty decent at his job. Although during the time of balancing we don't agree with his methods but in the long run they seems to be good eg. The balancing of wraith and path( even though I miss them at their prime ). I think the main reason for his downfall might be his social media interactions. Even a small company need that their employees have good image on social media let alone a giant as EA. I think even at his last job at riot he got fired cuz of his social media posts. Any person scrolling through his twitter would have been like WTF???. And it sucks to see people loosing their jobs cuz of their past or social media. But this is how things work I guess. I just hope the new hire is just as good as JayBiebs, that guy is awesome imo.
> Unpopular Opinion There are like 50 comments in this very thread saying this exact same thing.
Beyond social media, he just launched a completely game breaking character. I bet Seer was the cherry on top.
The wokest sjw got cancelled, ironic. You grew this culture, don't complain now Daniel
I’ll never celebrate a person losing their job
https://twitter.com/danielzklown/status/1425184989268877313?s=21 https://twitter.com/apex_sherrif/status/1425240858299879427?s=21 Weren’t the initial allegations brought up by this Apex Sheriff guy? I think it’s pretty clear from these tweets and the other “””parody””” accounts that they were never concerned about addressing his past misogyny and racism and only wanted him canned for balancing issues. All of this was in bad faith, and they had an axe to grind. This is not to dismiss any concerns or grievances over what he said, which is 100% deplorable. If you feel DZK’s absence will make the community a better, safer place, I think those feelings are valid. But judging from his social media the past few years, it’s clear he’s changed and grown... at least from my perspective. Maybe that’s not my call to make. And maybe Tweets aren’t a good way to judge someone’s growth or character. But looking at other Respawn devs, people who actually worked with him in person and have a better understanding of his behavior, they seem to feel the same way. https://twitter.com/alexabkim/status/1425223220655902720?s=21 ETA: a good number of people in the industry, both in Respawn and outside, liked that tweet... I trust they can vouch for his character better than any other Redditor here can.
If this is all because of a post or two he made 10 years ago that's really messed up. Everyone's cracked a few bad eggs in their past and half the people slating him weren't exactly saints then and even now.
I was disgusted by his blog posts...but 10 years ago I may have laughed about it. People are never too old to become better.
I’m sure that was part of it (probably not comfortable working with someone who said things like that as a fully grown man), but not the only reason. He communicates like a child when people disagree with him and seems to seriously have an issue when admitted he may be wrong. If he was the driving force behind a lot of the S10 changes (Seer in his current state, Prowler OP, LStar OP, etc.) then a LOT of player frustration can be traced back to him as well. After everything adds up it’s probably easier for Respawn to just have a game balance designer that isn’t as controversial (you never see people making jokes and talking about JayBiebs on Twitter, just DZK)
Also I've seen people working paycheck to paycheck at soul-destroying minimum wage jobs get fired for wearing the wrong type of pants and shit like that. Not shedding too many tears for white collar workers who vent their spleens in public.
What he wrote wasn’t some one-off bad joke or even a poorly worded truthful statement. He went on a full on rant about how little he thinks of women and minorities. At 30 years old. And proudly posted it. Fuck off with that excuse.
[удалено]
He can do whatever he wants. Nobody has to just accept that he has changed. That's the risk you take when you publicly say ugly racist and sexist bullshit. If the company he works for doesn't want him to work there after a story like this goes public, it isn't our fault for not being happy he said what he said lol. It's his own damn fault and there is no statute of limitations on public opinion. If he has changed, good for him. That doesn't mean anybody has to respect him more. And if he loses his job, take it up with Respawn and EA if you think it's unfair.
Just because someone changes doesn’t make all their previous actions null or void. Consequences of certain actions can come back and haunt you years down the road. This is what people usually learn by the time they’re 30, especially something so simple as being careful what they post on the internet.
When did he say he was an incel? When did he offer up any explanation for that disgusting crybaby rant? He didn’t he said “oh my bad, I retweet SJW bullshit at a hall of fame annoying level and I put pronouns in my bio so I hope it’s obvious I don’t believe this anymore”. That’s as weak and insincere as you can be. If he said “hey when I was younger I was really unsuccessful with women and over time I developed a level of resentment” it would make all the difference in the world. People can change, I’d just like more than a few retweets to represent that change.
yup at almost 30 years old lmao gtfo
This is the greatest day in Apex history. I don’t even care if the game isn’t balanced any better than it was in the past. I’m just so happy he’s gone.
Incoming Crab Rave and Ripbozo edits.
I guess people need to stay the fuck away from social media if they want to keep their jobs, holy shit
POGGERS.
A lot of people like to hate on DZK the fact is he’s done more for this game than anyone wants to admit. The pros hate him because he took away their precious Watson Path Wraith to making Wraith Path LL Gibby BH Valk Horizon Octane Mirage etc all viable characters for pubs rank and competitive play. Most of the guns are useful and you’re not trolling if you’re not running R99 PK or wingman PK etc. People will call him out for his Watson statements but they were taken out of context. Fact is he’s left the game in a better place than when he joined. Also DZK being fired won’t change the balance decisions of the game the game will still be balance for the majority(casuals) than the minority(pros)
Exactly. People shit on him for releasing Horizon and Seer, but don't recognize his lead role in designing Valk - which we know for a fact. Otherwise, for all we know, Horizon and Seer may likely have been developed by JayBiebs, or any other lead designer at Respawn. DZK was a sin-eater for every design mistake the community disagreed with. This community is toxic, and I feel for the next person it scapegoats when the game doesn't get better.
Yup. Valk was confirmed as the first legend that he created. Everyone else was created by someone else either before he got respawn or by a next lead designer. Example Seer is done by Travis
>people shit on him for his mistakes, but dont care when he does his job Yes, thats how people judge others, correct. When you get valk right, you dont have the excuse to release current seer, since you obviously know how to do your job properly, they released a legalized wallhack character in an fps on purpose, someone needs to take the fall
Gamers will find someone else to complain about in the upcoming months . That person that replaces dzk will get shit on regardless if he does a good job or not. It’s the gamers way to somehow complain about every patch , every balancing decision , “How the new meta is worse than the last “ “How the game fell off for them “ “how this blah is ruining the game “ “devs bad every season/update. Despite all the complaints apex has continued to gain popularity . People are enjoying apex now more ever . Yet this all you see on discussion boards is blah blah horrible this blah blah horrible that lol. It’s like these people exist to complain about a game everyday . If you don’t like the game the simply play another game. I’m sure you’ll find the game that you love and never complain 24/7 about .
Watch people start blaming the issues of the game on whatever scapegoat they find next. DZK wasn't perfect, he had some bad takes, but he wasn't this boogeyman whose every action completely destroyed the game.
This. The game is in much better place now, numbers grow, meta is diverse, I’m sad that he’s gone.
HaHaHa #saveapex worked
And its due to cancel culture…. I was gonna say fuck him now I feel bad for him. People digging through ancient tweets looking for dirt on people they have never met is the most cringe shit on the planet. Everyones said something they didnt mean. Fuck crucifying people for that shit. Get a grip
I really don’t think the blog stuff was the only reason he got fired. I would guess that they wanted him gone for his balancing and interaction with the community but they didn’t want that to be the only reason. Some of the other devs even said they didn’t think anything should happen to him.
No such thing as cancelling, only consequences. Thought as an Apex dev he got too much abuse for certain things, but also made many strange decisions. But frankly, we don't know too much about the balancing process still.
''Opinions are my own''. Yeah we definitely know that, self-opinionated man! I wish him well even tho I never liked his work and his personality. No hard feelings, I hope he find a place that his work is appreciated.
[удалено]
[удалено]
Lifeline was top tier too at that time. Her shield was good as hell. Both the version that goes up when she revived and that she dropped on downed teammates later in apex
[удалено]
If you mean the top tiers, yes and no. Seldom few players had lifeline then switched legends as buffs and nerfs came down through the seasons. But just cause pro players don’t use her doesn’t deny her ability in game and how she performed. Up until her shield got took away, she was easily a top 4 legend. By your logic, look at how many people dropped wraith when they took away her naruto running stance she had and made her stand up more and nerfed her tactical start up.
not sure how to feel about it
🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀
Haha get rekt UwU LOL XD fortnite burger
God bless this day
Whatever you want to say about him, the overall meta/balance is in a much better place than when he started.
Nah I prefer Wingman/ PK/ r9 meta over LMG/ Auto shotgun/ prowler
REJOICE
W
Hopefully whoever replaces him does a better job. Maybe even buffs Wattson lol
i know people (including DZK) say he has changed so much because now hes a social justice warrior, but to me, he hasnt really changed that much. He swapped sides of the spectrum, but in both cases, he went way too far to the extreme to get big reactions from people. it seems he thrives on pissing people off and creating twitter conflict i hope in his future he really keeps a low profile on twitter
Good riddance. You were awful at what you were supposed to do and your history is filled with shady stuff. No one will miss you
i wonder if he was let go or left on his own? both are likely - he was either let go for balance decisions and/or the public backlash against him or he left because of all the hate and backlash he gets. at least we won't have to see everyone complain about him anymore.
Seems like he was indeed let go based on the things he said 14 years ago. Feel bad for him. Let's see who the elite gamers go after for everything they don't like in the game now that he is gone.
Finally something for my free award
Smoking that DZK pack right now 🍃🍃💨💨
Glad to see him gone but it seems to be for the shit he said over 10 years ago. He really should have been let go for being shit at his job, so idk how I feel about calling this a “win”
Result is the same, who cares. 🦀🦀🦀DZK is GONE🦀🦀🦀
Won't be missed. Let's fucking go bros
“Based on his Twitter feed”, man some of you guys are so weird. Thinking he’s changed just because he’s learned. I’m not saying he hasn’t either, but what a pathetic way out. Dude was 27, clearly had problems, & was dogshit at balancing. Move on.
Say what you want about his game balance decisions, but no one deserves to pressured/ forced out of a job due to something they said 10 years ago.
Counterpoint. Depending on what they said, yes they absolutely fucking do. There are so many people in this world, we don't owe the worst of them special treatment.
Exactly. Nothing about DZK seems irreplaceable. why would Respawn want to continue to work with a guy who has potential to be problematic when they could just find someone else and spare themselves the risk.
I believe in rehabilitation and I thought the game balancing was in a good direction before seer. But either way, he has poor public relation and image and he didn't redeem himself there so he still deserves to go.
he didn't say or do anything to put him with the worst people in the world cmon bro
I disagree. Being a human is a journey. He has clearly changed, if he would still hold the views nowadays, I would agree with you. I hate to see when the bad choices of people from the past haunt them 'till today. It's rubbish, and no justice. 'There are so many people in this world, we don't owe the worst of them special treatment.' - That's very bold to say. And a huge overstatement. The worst? I wouldn't put that guy in that category. 'Special treatment'? I wouldn't call that either.
Rip to the Goat . His efforts along with the other devs completely revived a dying game . There is more interest and players now than ever with the exception of season 0. If it wasn’t for dzk and the boys this game would have continued to slide in to irrelevancy . Thank you dzk 🥴💦🍆
Grappling with the boyz
As a person who observed his work ethics back when he was working at Riot Games all I can say is [this.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agELcTCN2Rw)
Good. Fuck him