Clarification on Will Overgard's Termination
June 2018
Back in April, we posted briefly on why Will was fired. The statement was left intentionally simple and vague so that Will would suffer the least repercussions, but as Will has decided this is an opportune time to bring it up publicly on social media, we need to tell the full story. Will was fired for three reasons:
-
Failure to fulfill his duties as a manager
-
Failure to fulfill his duties as an employee
-
Publicly demeaning a marginalized person and making them feel unsafe
When Will was hired in November 2017, he was brought on not to be a streamer, but to manage and run Extra Credits streaming efforts. He was assigned to be Belinda Zoller’s boss, and the boss for anyone else he brought on to stream.
After a few months it became clear that Belinda wasn’t being well utilized for the stream; when asked about this, he blamed Belinda saying that despite his efforts they were spending too much time modding and that they’d let themselves get distracted by this and weren’t following his instructions. It later came to light that he had never sent so much as a single email of instructions to Belinda.
The only other streaming employee he brought on was someone who could have really used the cash, but despite being told by management that he needed to, he did not communicate to that person that they had to be paid.
Roughly a month after this email, management had to sit down with that employee to tell them that they were supposed to be getting paid for their work.
As an employee, part of what he was hired for was to use his network to get sponsorships for the Twitch stream in order to make it financially viable for Extra Credits to continue. Whenever managers asked about what progress was being made, he’d always kick it down the line or say it’d all be done at GDC. He came back from GDC with business cards and a few meetings under his belt, but no sponsorships had been signed or substantial progress made.
Then there was the biggest thing.
Will repeatedly demeaned a marginalized person trying to get into the industry at their first major professional event. He acted counter to the values we have at Extra Credits to inspire, uplift, and encourage people to follow their creative passions.
After management learned of this event, they had a meeting where they unanimously agreed that they had to let Will go.
He also alleges that Extra Credits is withholding his pay because the management wants to silence him. We can’t pay him, because in months of asking for one, he’s never given us a social security number. When EC hired him he said he was a US citizen, but didn’t make us aware that he didn’t have the required documents to work in the US. The images below are email communication between him and our accountant.
As a business, legally Extra Credits needs a social security number for the IRS. This is a totally standard procedure; every job you ever hold will ask for your social security number. Six months after this first came to light he still hasn’t produced one for Extra Credits. Ultimately, Extra Credits gave him half of his money to make sure he had enough to live, but our management and accountant agreed that we really can’t jeopardize the business any further without him either providing a social security number or a visa that makes him legally employable.
Beyond that, all Extra Credits asked him to sign were the standard exit documents for any employee in his position.
One last thing: he mentions in his post that he moved all the way out here for this job. Extra Credits actually flew him out of New Zealand after he told us that his boss from his last job at Rocketworkz was “out to get him” and that he was looking to leave New Zealand. This behavior seems to be a pattern with Will and not, as he claims, a one-time error due to unfortunate life circumstances.
Throughout the months he was employed, Will was made aware by several managers on multiple occasions of management’s concerns regarding his work ethic and task progress.
These were not details we were interested in sharing, but we hope that this provides some additional context to Will’s complaints.
--the Extra Credits team, c/o community manager Belinda Zoller
Updated 6/16/2018
Edit: one screenshot has been removed to protect privacy.
Updated 1/23/2020
Edit: Copy/pasted to our new website hosting provider. A date has been added to the title to show when this was originally posted.