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Nintendo Fires Employee For Speaking About Job On a Podcast
An anonymous reader writes: You may not have heard of Chris Pranger before, but he's one of the localizers that works to bring Nintendo games over to the west. He recently talked about the localization process for a small podcast, providing Nintendo fans some details about how games make it from Japan to the western world. Nintendo's response to the fan interest in the game localizing process? They fired him, of course. It's unclear what statements in specific Nintendo objected to and Nintendo, so far, hasn't explained its decision.
Here is a simple rule - unless you have been specifically authorized, don't talk about your companies business in public. Chances are very good you signed an agreement to that effect.
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This is a common and reasonable policy.
Evolution: love it or leave it
One of the worst examples was the kids school that Disney sued. Disney falsely claimed that by giving away or by charging minimal values, it opened them up to law suits from other locations demanding the same treatment. After it happened, Universal gave that school - for free - the use of their characters - Yogi Bear, Scooby Doo, Flintstones, etc. That happened in 1989.
Funny how Universal never ran into any lawsuits demanding the same treatment. Not a single one in all of 26 years.
Zero tolerance parties never make any sense. You do NOT need to enforce a policy for the little things in order to be able to enforce it for the big things. A mere warning is most often more than enough than actual punishment. A letter written to the Day school - offering a $10,000 donation in kind of a license to use the Disney characters would have been more than enough to maintain their copyright. Similarly, a strict warning and perhaps a one day suspension (no pay) would have let this employee off without endangering the "no press" rule's sanctity.
Other examples are very very common. Cops routinely ignore people traveling at 58 mph in a 55 mph zone. Some businesses routinely let people leave early on the day before a three day weekend.
In most cases where someone/some group enforces a rule strictly it's because some shmuck has an agenda to push, not because it enforcing it loosely wouldn't work.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
I have never worked for a company (even when I was an usher sweeping up trash at the movie theater) that did not have a very strict "do not talk to any media about the company" policy.
It's always been a very public and documented rule.
And that was working at a place with no IP or trade secrets.
Get it right man, it isn't Zero Tolerance, it is Zero Intelligence. Come on now. Seriously though, that is really what Zero Tolerance is about, removing any form of intelligence from the decision making process and assuming that one solution fits all situations. It truly Zero Intelligence. As you say it just doesn't make sense.
That was Oracle though. They're probably contractually obligated to make the company look bad.
If they didn't, it just wouldn't be Oracle.
Japanese and Japanese controlled companies are all about the hierarchy, in ways almost no Westerner can imagine. They are little feudal empires, and this peasant dared usurp the rights and privileges of his betters. So he's fired, of course. He should be happy they didn't transfer him to India or Iraq before firing him.
I don't know why this would seem surprising to anyone. Did everyone miss the Konami revelations about how the managers treat their employees?