Not that I'm aware of. I thought that was weird at first as well, but I assume it might be in a way to protect the engineer.
Unfortunately, singling out any individual developer, even for praise, can attract unwanted negative attention online. By acknowledging the passion and the work without naming the person, Swen gives them full credit internally while shielding them from becoming a public target.
This doesn't even necessarily have to be intentional harassment, but if this engineer is now the "SteamDeck guy" at Larian, their social media might get flooded by people who mistake their personal social media accounts for a support ticket.
I'm sure the engineer has the option to self-identify if they wish, but this approach feels like a sign of good and thoughtful leadership.
This is an interesting perspective... I'd be at a loss to think of an example of an engineer who's been publicly pilloried (having been highly regarded for great work) for the failings of their company. Perhaps you could cite and example?
Seems enormously more likely to be the all to familiar story in the games industry of not providing credit to individual devs. Something that goes back to the earliest days of Atari.
> I'd be at a loss to think of an example of an engineer who's been publicly pilloried (having been highly regarded for great work) for the failings of their company. Perhaps you could cite and example?
Because these guys and gals are not famous enough to warrant large coverage, and because the phenomenon is unfortunately so widespread that noone is going to cover every case.
Thanks, really appreciate the concrete examples. They're not quite what I was referring to (developer praised by company / media - then attacked for issues with the company beyond their purview), but they do point to a (largely invisible from outside the industry / twitter bubble) truly worrying and frightening level of animosity and aggression pointed towards devs that I wasn't sufficiently aware of.
I don't think you need a case quite this specific because of the following:
> then attacked for issues with the company beyond their purview
Ultimately, whether an employee is praised or not is completely irrelevant to the nutjobs taking their anger out on them because of something their employer did.
I agree. It's bad in either case. No issue with a game or game engine should ever result in threats of violence or harassment. It's vile to publicly shame, cancel, still less attack individuals for the mistakes of their companies.
My initial skepticism was based in the voluminous amount of false allegations of harassment and misportrayal of valid criticism as harassment that happened at one point several years ago in the games industry.
I'm not necessarily saying they'd get pilloried. I'm saying that having your personal digital space colonized by people who think you're customer support is insanely disruptive.
Think replies full of "I only get 8 fps in Act 3, pls fix" when you just wanted to post a photo of your vacation.
I can't think of specific names anymore since it's been a while since I have played it, but a lot of the developers for World of Warcraft used to be and likely still are active on Twitter. For a lot of them, the community knew fairly well which features of the game or which class they were responsible for. When I used to look at the replies to some of their Tweets (even ones completely unrelated to WoW), they were often full of complaints about their area of perceived responsibility.
I fully understand every engineer who just wants to put their head down and work on their stuff they're passionate about without having to also be public-facing. Even in a small company like mine, some of our devs constantly complain that some customers know that they are responsible for certain features of our product and email them directly rather than going through the proper support channels.
Your point about the games industry often struggling with providing proper credit to devs is well taken - it's absolutely an issue. But in this case, Vincke did actually do that, in a way. He could've just kept quiet and let the playerbase think it was a company effort, but instead he publicly highlighted and recognized the passion and work of one of their engineers (even though anonymously). That engineer can look at the countless positive replies to that post and get the nice fuzzy feeling without getting dragged into the spotlight.
I take your point about being inadvertently made a point of contact for customer support / complaints about technical issues with the game.
Disagree however about the value credit - personal credit has concrete value (career wise, status wise etc), warm and fuzzy feelings less so. Right now we can only guess whether the dev had a say in the matter.
You're absolutely right that named credit has tangible career benefits that go well beyond feelings. But I think Vincke threaded that needle well with the anonymous public credit - it creates a documented public record of innovative work at the company level while preserving the engineer's privacy.
The engineer can still leverage this (LinkedIn, internal promotions, industry networking) without being forced into a public-facing role they might not want. When they're interviewing or networking, they can point to Vincke's public acknowledgment and say "that was my project" in contexts where it's professionally relevant, without having their personal social media permanently associated with it.
Considering Vincke was impressed enough to publicly acknowledge this individual's passion and initiative, there's no doubt in my mind that this engineer could get named credit or something that would acknowledge their role in the project if they wanted it.
But to go a bit meta:
I think it's strange that we are discussing this in the context of a CEO publicly acknowledging one of their engineers (even if anonymously). Vincke is, at least in the context of the broader industry, going above and beyond. I doubt you'd see Ubisoft, EA, or Blizzard publicly acknowledging a single engineer's after-hours passion project in this way.
Feels a bit like misdirected energy, I guess?
Why are we debating about the nuances of named vs anonymous credit and recognition when industry leaders don't give any?
It's like calling someone out for only tipping 10% while ignoring the guy in the top hat who's tipping 0. If you want gaming companies to get better about giving credit and recognition, you should support the companies that are at least moving in the right direction. I know it's easy to be cynical, but don't let perfect be the enemy of good.
I'd cite that as an example of the tyranny of diminished expectations. To be clear - I was criticising not providing named recognition. Of course providing some recognition is better than none. Perhaps you're right, perhaps the engineer involved can leverage this in interviews (or perhaps not, it might be difficult to prove / DNA'd etc), but you're giving the CEO the benefit of the doubt here.
I very strongly agree all creative workers should receive fair recognition (and compensation) for their work. I disagree with directionality as a moral framework. Doing something similar to the right thing is not necessarily doing the right thing. In this case my immediate assumption would be that the CEO is boasting about their anonymous hardworking impassioned employees as a way of 'glazing' the company, rather than shielding them from public criticism. It's impossible to know, but CEOs are not generally known to be good and ethical people. Larian may well be exceptional in this regard, but giving the benefit of the doubt to CEOs in general is a poor heuristic.
I've worked enough with customers to know they're mostly fine, until you get that one weirdo that finds out where you work and follows you home. You get a few every year. Knowing that, who would want their name associated with something in a space that produces as many incredibly motivated folks as the videogame industry?
Unfortunately, singling out any individual developer, even for praise, can attract unwanted negative attention online. By acknowledging the passion and the work without naming the person, Swen gives them full credit internally while shielding them from becoming a public target.
This doesn't even necessarily have to be intentional harassment, but if this engineer is now the "SteamDeck guy" at Larian, their social media might get flooded by people who mistake their personal social media accounts for a support ticket.
I'm sure the engineer has the option to self-identify if they wish, but this approach feels like a sign of good and thoughtful leadership.