Yesterday I posted an article on one Xander Davis, a man causing waves around the internet as he came forward and told his story of how he had apparently rebuilt Darksiders II’s user interface from the ground up in just a little over a month and then been fired. To his surprise he discovered upon realise of the game that he hadn’t  been credited for his work in the title sequence, despite claiming that the user interface within the game hadn’t been changed since his departure from the company.

Of course there’s always two sides to ever story and exactly how much of Xander’s story was true, false, exaggerated, accurate or in accurate was hard to tell. This morning I awoke to find that Vigil games had been in touch with their official statement, written by David Adams, head of Vigil, regarding Xander Davis and his accusations. Here’s what they had to say:

“After ending yesterday with the successful launch of Darksiders II, we at Vigil Games woke up to get word of a former employee’s statements regarding how his contributions were not being accounted for in the credits of the game.  What was most disheartening about the statements was how misleading they were, and how they fly in the face of how Vigil, culturally, feels about and treats our teams.

While employment and privacy laws preclude us from discussing the circumstances surrounding the departure of any individual no longer with the company, we can confirm that the employee in question worked for us a total of 90 days, whereas Darksiders II was more than 2 ½ years in development.

When we were forced to reduce staff due to the cancellation of a project, we worked hard to ensure every single person effected by the layoff received their credit in the game.  We did not include individuals whose employment terminated for any other reason, for example, being let go for documented poor performance.

We believe we treat both current and former positive contributors to our studio like family, and any statements otherwise are highly inaccurate and can be verified as same.  We would ask any press who wish to report on this former employee’s statements to check the accuracy of these erroneous claims, before printing them as factual.

To reiterate, Vigil’s primary concern while doing Darksiders II credits was that we credited team members that were affected by the recent downsizing.   We were not focused on the issue of employees that voluntarily left or were fired from the company.  We find it alarming that a former employee would personally attack and lie about other team members while falsely inflating his contribution to the game.

We thank, once again, all those who positively contributed to Darksiders II.

-David Adams
General Manager, Vigil Games”

The primary things to take from this are of course confirmation that Xander was indeed working for Vigil, and that the statement seems to confirm that he was fired for reasons of performance, a fact to which Xander did mention in his interview with NotEnoughShaders where he said that Vigil claimed “performance” reasons for his being let go.

Of course this all raises more questions than it actually answers: was Xander’s fired for legitimate performance reasons? It does seem strange, after all, that they’d hire him and then fire him so quickly if his work was indeed that good. But then, stranger things have happened in the industry.

There’s then the question of whether it was right to not credit Xander for his work, regardless of whether he was fired. Assuming that his the UI in the full game was indeed still almost entirely his work as he claims, of course.

In short, we may not have both sides of the story but the actual truth of the whole thing remains largely clouded in mystery. What do you think?

And remember, you can read he article here:
https://wolfsgamingblog.com/2012/08/15/darksiders-ii-scores-big-but-xander-davis-speaks-out-against-vigil/