Ah. Shame on me for not reading the article. Usually associate the director of a big game as high up enough in the studio that they still get good money.
In that case… this is completely pointless and is just an attempt to avoid needing to figure out the right tone for the “This is the worst day of my life and I am so sad that I just fired a couple dozen people because of my business decisions” linkedin post that is usually associated with the mass layoffs. He isn’t even metaphorically falling on his sword. He is just washing his hands of it.
I mean… where do you think the “this has a terrible launch” comes from?
If Influencers like a game, everyone looks past the massive performance and stability issues. If influencers don’t like a game, a single crash is enough to mark it as trash that should be ignored until a couple patches… which is a death sentence for a multiplayer game that requires a critical mass of players to be worth buying.