Sega.Com in Trouble Already?

Before I go any further, let me explain that Fat Babies is a source for video game industry news, rumors, and stories.  Now, FatCSK of the site had told this story of how Sega.Com is doing.  Apparently, quite a bit of the staff is gone, and Kage, the network setup for Sega.Com, is doing terrible:

About a week after E3, Sega.Com head honcho Brad Huang e-mails everyone that they would get a 4 day July 4th weekend to congratulate all the Sega.Comers for the successful relaunch of Heat.Net. 

Then 2 weeks before the July 4th holiday, new VP of HR, some little man with hardcore little man’s complex named David LOPez, fires everyone at Sega.Com who works in Sales, Marketing, Art, PR and content. Heat tech support, who will also be fired, was left to twist in the wind, unsure if they were actually fired or not, as Sega.Com tried to sell Heat to Mplayer. Heat also tried to fool the Heat members by canceling, or “re-setting” degrees, but smart members figured it out. Mplayer bought their 51% share of HEAT and then the tech/customer support was handed walking papers. 

Even better, head of marketing/PR, Greg CHUMPmeingo, quit the day before everyone under his departments found out they were getting fired. So all these schleps took this guy out for beers to say their goodbye’s and the whole time this guy knew they were all axed the next day, he just didn’t have the balls to tell them! 

Even better, after LOPez and his assistant Cheryl WHOREmenez fired all those people they had to crawl back to some and ask them stay because they shouldn’t have let them go by mistake. 

So all the fired people have to finish their 2 weeks, as opposed to getting any real severance package. Makes for a nice 4th of July holiday weekend. Better yet, a trip to Marine World was organized and they had to uninvite like 100 fired people. 

Even better, new CTO, decides all the tech guys have the wrong vision, let’s their leader, some fruit named Scanner, resign, and then all Scanner’s loyal minions follow suit leaving a bunch of newbies to make fixes to code they have no background in. 

So now that most of the company has been fired or quit, LOP thinks taking everyone out to the movies will be the touchy feely solution to making everyone happy here again. Gee, perhaps if I was 5, but at 32, it’s a shallow move made by a little person with no regard for anything other than his shitty black Lexus and his noticeable lack of height and integrity. 

In addition to all that crap, they also decide to turn the company upside down by moving everyone’s cube so the exec staff can all have cool offices built to reinforce their self importance. 

This guy works here 2 weeks and thinks he can step in and fire the company and we’ll forgive him because of a movie…what a chump! 

SEGA.Com is banking on getting 100 thousand NFL2k1 users online the week the game goes on sale! These are the same geniuses who mailed out 1 million free CD’s to Japanese DC consumers so they could play 10Six. Out of that million CD giveaway, 70 logged in to play. So if NFL2k1 sells 150 thousand on day 1, maybe 12 people will log into for multiplayer fun. That’s a money making strategy. 

Also, they want it all to launch by Sept.7th, and there isn’t even a working edition of NFL2k1 with the internet functions. Sega.com‘s own client software, KAGE is in shambles and is being delivered as Kage light and Kage diet, while developers are choosing to use Gamespy over Kage. 

Besides all that, just about every department is understaffed! And everyone is being treated like their contribution is not needed or wanted; that we’re all somehow lucky to the ones who were spared. 

Welcome to Sega.Com.

First, SegaNet online games were down to a minimum, then Microsoft’s potential dirty tricks, now this.  Things aren’t looking up for the company.  We’ll continue to follow this up to SegaNet’s launch in September.