A former Ignition, FL artist. wrote:

I worked at Ignition from between august '09 till mid-may '10

Everything being mentioned so far is 100% true.
Paul Steed is a ultra douchebag of the highest caliber.

Storytime

Early this year, we almost got him fired. Almost. By that point all the complaints about steed had finally reached some boiling point with his superiors at UTV. All the hostile workplace complaints, pending sexual harassment claims, and numerous complaints about his mismanagement of resources and personnel, had forced UTV to step in. Paul had found out about this visit by the corporate guys and had initially tried to cherry pick who would be interviewed, obviously so that he could pick the few people that were in his club of lapdogs. However UTV insisted on interviewing the entire departments. The Wednesday prior to the Monday corporate visit, Paul, probably seeing that shit was going bad for him, got ridiculous drunk late the night on the office premises, wandered around, urinated on things, and threw up on one of the building entrances before passing out. Then reflexively sucker punched someone who tried to help him up. This was caught on security cam. He never showed up to work the next day, by that afternoon though almost everyone heard what had happened. Friday, our internet goes down for an hour and a very anxious looking paul steed immediately afterwards calls a meeting and makes a grand show about how he believes our internet was "SABOTAGED" and that he would personally look into the security camera footage to find the culprit. Of course most people saw through his plan to get his hands on the security camera footage, too bad for him it had been seen by HR the previous day and already sent off to UTV. During the monday interviews with UTV. The whole studio pretty much threw Paul under the bus. it was glorious.

However due to his conflict of interest type situation where he owned the outsourcing studio that we used, he was almost like an inoperable brain tumor, we couldn't totally be rid of him. So instead he got knocked down about 3 positions from the top and forced to work from home indefinitely, and was replaced by a guy who looked like sawyer from LOST.

Paul though, being the douche that he was couldn't leave well enough alone. The entire time that he was working from home, he was trying to sneak his fingers back into the old pies, and handle stuff that he wasn't supposed to be handling anymore, bribing people with offers of doing their more preferred styles of work, or better arrangements, to slowly rebuild his power. All the while bragging about "how much tail he gets when he travels to china by lying to girls about green cards" (he's a married man with a family btw) or mentioning how "when he gets back in charge he's firing all the bitches!" and that "Women weren't worth the trouble to hire anymore."

This went on for a few months. Then around 2 weeks before i left, Paul just kinda disappeared with a very white washed email about exploring other options or some crap like that. We figured at the time he either got tired of being sidelined or UTV finally found out how to can his ass. Rumor has it he actually just got drunk at a bar, got into a fight, and attacked the cop that was called to break up the fight, and that he couldn't post bail. Though i can't find confirmation on that, it sounds like something Paul would do.

I'm at least thankful to Paul for one thing, his bullshit was what gave me the drive to go freelance to get the hell out of there.

Also, he still owes me 1 airsoft gun i lent him for a mocap shoot that he broke, and promised to replace but didn't >:(

A former Ignition, FL artist. wrote:

@Rick: I worked with Paul Steed at Ignition Florida for a total of three months. I moved my entire house and family to Gainesville. I left the studio solely based on Paul Steeds abusive behavior. This was a year ago before any fears came to light about the studio possibly closing down.

The man would walk into the studio completely shit faced and make creative suggestions that he would completely not remember the next day and would ask you why you made those changes. He asked me once "Please make this cave entrance look like a nice juicy wet pussy" he was completely serious with this request by the way. He would yell at employees and belittle them in front of everyone constantly.

I dont care what kind of person he was like when you met him at that convention. In fact Im happy you had a much better experience than I did. At the end of the day I resigned after only three months and luckily had a job waiting for me elsewhere. I would never again work with Paul Steed and I honestly hope no one else will ever have to.

I hold no grudges on the studio and in fact I feel very bad for everyone that worked so hard for something that some jerk completely sabotaged.

A former Ignition, FL artist. wrote:

I know that these stories of Paul's Douchebaggery may seem like exaggerations and outright lies straight from the lips of disgruntled employees. but i can assure you they are not.

If there was 1 thing, 1 thing at all that Paul Steed could do, is tell you exactly what you wanted to hear. That was his talent. The guy was a manipulator through and through. Hell, he seemed like a nice enough guy when i first met him, but that impression did not last long.

-He once fired a guy for taking a vacation he was approved for. For his sister's wedding no less.
-He once fired a guy for coming in a little late on a weekend despite the guy commutes on a bicycle and was one of our better artists.
-He most certainly did have numerous pending sexual harassment claims against him.
-He would talk shit about his employees
-Most definitely got intoxicated on the premises
-Definitely got in fights, there's been a few employees that have or have almost taken knuckle sandwiches from him both in and out of the office.
-Definitely would forget the changes that he'd have requested the day before and then go off about how you aren't taking the work seriously.
-He'd often circumvent everyone and try to include his own laughably amateurish attempts at 3d modeling into the game.
-and then all the incredibly stupid artistic, and managerial decisions

Hell, When he was in charge, morale had hit rock bottom, people left in droves, I knew many people that quit just because of paul and no other reason. I knew people that arranged their resignation with HR to specifically not let paul know that they were leaving, because they were afraid of how he'd react.

The guy was a bully, a narcissistic, muscle-headed, extra from Jersey shore looking bully.

A former Ignition, FL artist. wrote:

Well, as I can remember i don't think there was anything wrong with his technique of modeling. As that was not my particular specialty.

Its just his actual visual design sensibility that was stupid.

For instance there was some period of time where we were designing some golem looking npc. We went through various approaches. I guess paul got frustrated and decides to model it himself. It looked like some goofy looking low poly boulder snowman that some kid taking a 1st year course might make.

At a different point, we'd been going through revision after revision of the weapons over and over. Just when he'd settle on something, the following week, he'd change his mind. When it came to designing a sort of energy shotgun, there were literally dozens of concepts to choose from. Apparently he liked none of them and decides to design and model one himself. It was literally a weird, ugly as hell nonsensical combination of breakopen overunder shotgun and pump action shotgun, that looked like 2 very low poly low detail shortbarreled mossberg 500s stacked atop each other. The weapon was mostly primitive shapes for god's sake.

I should also add that he kept pushing and pushing and pushing for stuff in our game that would get us an Adults only rating, even when it was obvious that there's no way in hell we could afford to sell a game like that. Stuff like a giant spider raping a female npc, or having sex with a female nazi officer right in the intro. I wish i was joking.

Another Former Iggy wrote:

Paul Steed being a complete a-hole all put aside, here's more of the shadiest part of his whole deal with Ignition. During the time I was there Paul Steed *somehow* was promoted again and again from Outsource Art Director to Studio Art Director and eventually to Creative Director over all facets of the studio, including Tech/Code and Game Design. How he managed to falsify those credentials I'll never know. Of course while this was happening, he was still the managing owner of the outsource company producing the majority of art for the studio. When in charge, he essentially played games withthe artists - where he would give them a task and the one who completed it closest to his satisfaction got to keep their job. He fired most of the artists just to fill Exigent's work orders and make himself more money. If that isn't a severe conflict of interest, I don't know what is. Even poor corporate management wouldn't allow for something like that to happen... Ignition and it's investors are chumps who don't know a thing about business, let alone game design.

The sad thing is, after rebooting at the end of May '10 and fixing all the mistakes previous management had made to where they could actually finish the game and ship Q3'11, management dropped the ball in a huge way. They put a hiring freeze in place to keep the studio from hiring the essential artists needed to complete the game (you know, the ones Paul Steed fired?), and yet complained about the art quality (which was primarily Paul Steed's previous art as placeholder). The team had 3 levels finished with gameplay, waiting for art which couldn't be delivered do to the freeze, and 3 more in production during the studio closure. The management that the studio received in the last few months did a great job of cleaning up and getting schedules in place (another failing of Paul Steed) and we caught by surprise just as much as the rest of the studio because everyone was on their way to finishing a good (if not great) game.

Whatever hope Ignition had of making that money back is gone now. Instead of launching a AAA title, they'll swallow that loss and release a cheap digital download.

I suppose one wonders why Ignition continued to put so much faith in Paul... it's because Paul never delivered a game. He would deliver a movie to corporate every single time because the game was unplayable, unpredictable, and scripted/edited movies are great for pretend time with the executives who know nothng about what real game development looks like. Paul Steed could lie through his teeth about anything and make you believe it... it's enough to make you believe in pacts with the devil.