ArenaNet LLC, developer of massively multiplayer online game Guild Wars 2 and subsidiary of NCSoft, fired two of its writer staff after a public argument on Twitter with a YouTube content creator for the game this week.

“Recently two of our employees failed to uphold our standards of communicating with players,” ArenaNet President Mike O’Brien wrote on the company’s official forums on Thursday. “Their attacks on the community were unacceptable. As a result, they’re no longer with the company.”

The two employees fired were content writers Jessica Price, a veteran of Microsoft Game Studios, and Peter Fries, narrative designer and environmental artist for ArenaNet for more than 12 years.

“I want to be clear that the statements they made do not reflect the views of ArenaNet at all. As a company we always strive to have a collaborative relationship with the Guild Wars community.”

The argument started on Twitter when a content creator for Guild Wars related content on YouTube with the moniker Deroir responded to a thread created by Price where she was discussing crafting dialogue.

In the thread, Price discussed the nature of creating dialogue and narrative design for MMO games and the challenges of writing in such an environment and for such an audience.

In his reply, Deroir disagreed with Price’s design approach and gave his own opinion on the matter.

The replies that appear to have thrust Price into hot water involve her reacting to Deroir’s opinions with snarky and personal replies.

“thanks for trying to tell me what we do internally, my dude 9_9,” wrote in reply to Deroir’s comments.

During the discussion, Price also commented that it is not uncommon for people to tell others, especially women, in the industry how to do their jobs – often telling them all about how their jobs work, even when these women are experts or celebrities in their own field.

“Today in being a female game dev: ‘Allow me–a person who does not work with you–explain to you how you do your job,’” Price tweeted about the entire exchange.

Many commenters entering into the thread filtered into separate camps about the nature of the discussion. A raft of commenters painted Price as rude and uncivil, while noticing that Deroir’s commentary remained polite in his tone. Others joined to comment that in any dialogue, give and take is necessary and that includes accepting remarks in kind independent of tone.

The second writer to be fired, Fries, a colleague of Price at ArenaNet, deleted many of his tweets about the exchange. Most of his comments involved supporting and amplifying Price’s message about how she felt about being told how her job works.

This led to a tweet that caught community attention and brought thoroughly heated discussion out of the confines of a Twitter thread and into the mainstream spotlight.

At one point, Price referred to people who “[attempt] to explain the concept of branching dialogue to me” as “rando asshats” and that she would “instablock” those who did so.

Looking at Price’s Twitter profile, it is clear that this message is not exceptional but is an exemplar of the way she views her treatment online.

“Game producer, writer, editor, howling maenad. ArenaNet Narrative team. Obsessed with lionesses,” Price’s Twitter profile says about her (previous) job and interests. Then she goes on to make it known how she handles her personal Twitter feed: “Salty language. I block often. I won’t play demure for you.”

As for ArenaNet executives and their decision to fire Price and Fries mere days after this incident, there is only the comment from O’Brien that paints the firing as part of both breaking with “standards of communicating with players.”

It is unknown at this time if ArenaNet has an internal policy that led to this decision. Many corporate entities, including extremely public-facing gaming publishers and developers, make employees sign documents that restrict their behavior and speech online.

Such a policy could have included a section restricting employees from being rude or appearing to be rude to the community. It is also not uncommon for publishers and developers to require employees to not speak about their craft as it relates to their jobs in such a way that it makes the company look bad as a sort of public relations and image control.

Although Deroir did tweet that he meant no disrespect and offered to retract his comments, he also peppered his reply with a lot of unnecessary additional language that would only continue the argument over Price’s reactions.

As for the community, news of Price and Fries being fired and the argument that happened over the 4th of July holiday hit Reddit, official forums and other spaces. Much of the reaction there remained extremely similar with numerous threads being produced to hash out what happened.

Due to community backlash, and ArenaNet’s response, swatkins818 posted: When the dust of this incident settles, I hope devs aren’t discouraged from interacting positively with the community.

“So we’ve established that calling people sexist and telling them to fuck off for polite criticism generally isn’t going to fly here,” wrote swatkins818 at the start of the post. “That said, after all of this I’m a little worried that the devs aren’t exactly going to be eager to jump back into it after two of their coworkers were just fired.”

Looking back at the incident, and the reaction of ArenaNet executives, a chilling effect will cast a pall over the commentary and transparency of any developers, designers, artists and especially now writers for the game.

Things are about to get more opaque than ever before.

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