They might seem like a large company, but there was probably one person, probably an intern, who had to find some textures for that part of the game. That person made a mistake.
Obviously there should be checks/balances in place to make sure unauthorized imagery isn't used. But people make mistakes. The author is basically directly attacking some poor bastard who works at Naughty Dog.
I am sure Naughty Dog will fix the situation, and I'm sure they could have done it without being publicly flamed.
Well, firstly Naughty Dog ARE a large company. 240 people, according to Wikipedia. OK, compared to General Electric, they might not seem like much - but 240 is plenty large by game studio standards. Regardless, my comment about corporate entities has nothing to do with size! Whether made up of 1 person or 10,000, a business can and should be held to a higher standard of behaviour than an individual. (Don't worry, businesses aren't alive, so they're unlikely to feel unfairly put upon.)
Anyway: it doesn't really feel like an individual is being "attacked" here, just the company as a whole. What's unreasonable about that? It's the company's responsibility to ensure that they release a product that (amongst other things) doesn't infringe copyright. It appears that this time they have failed to do that, and they're being called out on it.
The closest thing to an attack I could see was the suggestion that "they" did a google image search to find the image - which, to my eyes, quite apart from being obviously merely a supposition, hardly sounds like anybody is being singled out.
"The author is basically directly attacking some poor bastard who works at Naughty Dog."
No. Decisions about IP are never "just one person". They involve layers of approvals and sign-offs, some creative, some financial, some legal. That's not to say that mistakes don't happen. Of course they happen. But you're not dealing with one person here, you're dealing with a system. And clearly, it's a system that could stand to be tighter than it is.
Obviously there should be checks/balances in place to make sure unauthorized imagery isn't used. But people make mistakes. The author is basically directly attacking some poor bastard who works at Naughty Dog.
I am sure Naughty Dog will fix the situation, and I'm sure they could have done it without being publicly flamed.