Eric did apologize for how he handled the situation, it is true (and more than once), and there’s mistakes everyone makes when being a Lead. I made worse mistakes than Eric for sure – and saying Eric made mistakes is not an insult. There is no “but” or “however” in this statement.

I only had an issue with the process, and Eric admitted he did as well – and he told me himself after my departure that the Project Director was the reason the process didn’t work as Eric intended (and would have been correct for a Creative Lead in my eyes). If that was incorrect, that’s fine, but that’s what he told me at the time.

I will say that I did the fixes as quickly and cleanly as possible, and I could have done them much faster had a gotten a critique direct from the source. Instead, there was meeting after meeting where I said the same thing and we had to discuss things that really, none of us needed to discuss (I was happy to make the cuts). My only issue was the process, and it's not personal.

It’s also worth bearing in mind that the process issue was larger than it appears – what work I put into PoE wasn’t gained back when I went back to Tyranny, so any decision made on PoE (for example, assistance that was promised in implementing the characters) that was then retracted, it cost more and more time overall. I’m not bitter about this because that simply was the norm. I did not have time to work on both projects, but that is a failure of upper management and scheduling/double-timing two projects. That said, the employees from Tyranny did work hard to make the work they did for Pillars shine. Don’t take this as I’m angry that Pillars took time from Tyranny, or that Tyranny was my personal project (it wasn’t, Brian Heins was the PD), it just was something that I knew the team would pay for and it wouldn’t be given back, which turned out to be the case because again, that was the norm.

I don’t know why Eric left Obsidian, nor do I mean to draw a connection between Josh’s review of the Eric’s performance and the storyline process, the amount of control he wanted in the process, and Eric’s departure. I still think it is good Eric left/went contracting. If the two weren’t related, that’s ideal.

I can't recall who said this in this thread, but for the record, I would resist anyone's attempts to downplay the work Eric did on South Park – he did quite a bit, and shouldn’t be dismissed, and it was Creative Lead work (it’s also one of the reasons I don’t equate Creative Lead = the person who wrote the story). Both Eric’s boss and I did fight to get him Lead credit on South Park, which he deserved, since he was doing the job. His duties on South Park were also part of the reason we recommended he not be Creative Lead on Eternity.

Sensuki said: ?
Its strongly implied that he can't due to an NDA that he had to sign to get 'his share' back. I suppose that is one of the reasons why you get little tidbits here and there.
I didn’t get anything when I left Obsidian. There were no share payouts, no equity, and this was in addition to the other logistical problems around the departure – the sudden cancellation of my health insurance, problems with my 401K, errors in Obsidian’s accounting, and several existing independent contracts they refused to uphold.

Realizing my family issues and the debts therein, however, they did make an attempt to leverage that into a far more confining separation agreement that would remove my right to work on RPGs, and my silence on all issues that could pertain to Obsidian or any other company they were involved with or the CEO had a % in (Fig, Zero Radius, Dark Rock Industries, etc.). This included an inability to critique games I’d worked on – much of my critiques on my own games tend to be blunt, and not being able to speak to them felt unnatural to me.

The company involvement silence worried me more, however, as it meant that if anything illegal happened with any of those companies (these could include serious charges like accounting issues, silence on harassment issues with regards to employees, perjury related to company documents and payments), I couldn’t speak about the issue, even if I felt strongly against what was being revealed.

While all this is good for Obsidian's upper management and is what is sometimes considered "good business," I did feel it showed a lack of ethics.

Still, that attempt at leverage did cause me to re-evaluate aspects of my life. Realizing debt was affecting my decision, I instead focused on working as hard as possible to make up for the amount Obsidian tried to use as leverage to force a signature – and succeeded.

When that happened, I realized I was free of the situation – completely free, for the first time. Feargus and the owners had no hold on my voice, my time, and my creativity any longer. And it was great.

When they made me an offer to contract me to write for Tyranny (which might seem to be an olive branch, but it turned out to be something they needed for contractual reasons with Paradox, but no one had ever communicated it to me), these were the reasons I refused – I didn’t wish to be part of Obsidian’s upper level development process and their pipelines any longer, as these processes were coming from a bad place, and it showed.

Also, realizing there was no restitution for the issues mentioned, I made a promise to myself that nothing I would do would ever cause Feargus and the owners any further financial gain. If my silence was that important to them, then there's no need to be silent because that right hadn't been signed away. Simply put, I like the developers at Obsidian very much, I work and correspond with many of those who are there or have left, and I would work with the developers again. I do feel upper management at Obsidian has serious flaws that need to be addressed, and I stand by that statement.