Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford, recreated in a photo illustration of the game Borderlands‘s cover art. (credit: Photo illustration by Aurich Lawson)
A pair of lawsuits filed in Dallas County District Court late last year came to light on Friday, each revolving around an apparently nasty dispute between the former general counsel of Gearbox Studios (makers of the Borderlands and Aliens: Colonial Marines game series) and its CEO, Randy Pitchford.
A November filing by Gearbox, uncovered by Kotaku’s Jason Schreier, alleged that the company’s former general counsel, Wade Callender, “exploit[ed] Gearbox’s generosity and trust for his own personal gain.” Callender’s own counter-suit, filed in the same court one month later, went quite a bit further. Callender’s suit alleges that Pitchford “breached his fiduciary duties by exploiting Gearbox employees and property to fund Pitchford’s private cravings,” and one portion of the suit makes two sensational accusations about Pitchford’s behavior: that he accidentally left a selection of “underage” pornography on a USB stick at a restaurant, and that he used his company’s money to host parties where “adult men have reportedly exposed themselves to minors, to the amusement of Pitchford.”
The allegations about a USB stick places its discovery at a 2014 Medieval Times Dinner and Tournament location in Dallas, down the road from Gearbox’s Plano, TX, headquarters. As Callender alleges in the December suit, someone from the restaurant perused the USB stick’s contents upon their discovery and then contacted the game studio so that its employees could recover it. “Pitchford declared that the thumb drive was his and requested its prompt return,” Callender’s suit states.
Read 14 remaining paragraphs | Comments
