coolerz

@Kirk slow down, this is Singapore you are talking about. He's lucky he just got sacked and not sued and jailed.
Plus the population is not big enough to support any company who gets boycotted by a fraction of the population.

@Kirk yes but it definitely is within Nintendo's legal rights to dismiss him, whether it's morally right or not is another issue.

@Kirk that would be up to the lawyers to defend if he were to take the case to court, which he won't because he idolises the company and can't because he doesn't has a job and is crippled by loans. Too bad. The world is unfair like that, money makes the world go round.

@Kirk there is evidence though. The comments by all the fans on all the online discussions, even this article in itself. The case has been made worse by the Internet and all the keyboard warriors.

If I were working in PR for Nintendo, I will be recommending to just sack him and deal with the aftermath, because the amount work to repair the damage either way is the same, but it will appease the higher ups.

@Kirk I think you haven't seen my edited post. I explained why I think there's grounds of dismissal due to the damage of company image. See my previous post. Good to have intelligent discussion.

@Kirk I agree with you that I don't think it's the NDA that came into effect that caused him his job. There's no breach of corporate secrets. It's the media policy that they will have grounds to dismiss him on.

Edit: Elaborating, Nintendo's PR stance is fun games for everybody, where their game designers are gamers at heart. What does his comments show? The company thinks gamers are whiny kids, fun is not their priority and their game designers are childish dictators. Tell me that is not damaging to Nintendo.

@Kirk I don't understand why you keep harping on existence on the NDA. As I explained in my previous post, there's such a thing such as a corporate media policy. Companies have no use for employees who talk trash to the media / online that is against the company image / brand that the PR side has worked so hard to build up.

For a simple example, see here: http://www.biztree.com/doc/media-relations-policy-D1394

Every company, no matter big or small is encouraged to put in place a media policy. Nintendo would definitely have something like that.

I understand you have been through the same instance twice, that's why you empathise with him, but the company has a right to do it, that's why there are so many anecdotes of it.

I'm half way through the comments and I just HAD to make an account to reply to this issue.

I work in PR, so I know a little about media policies in corporations. Regardless of whether Pranger signed a NDA as so many of you have stated, corporations have a media policy that normally states the people who are authorised to speak to the media on behalf of the company and the topics they can speak about. It is in every employee's contract that they have to adhere to the media policy, or the company has grounds to let them go. Going by Pranger's position in the company and the department he works in, he definitely did not have authority to speak to the media.

And people who are calling this a small issue, THIS IS A PR CRISIS! Just look at the amount of negative comments Nintendo is receiving. I once had a colleague who made a joke to the media that was misrepresented, and we had to spend days trying to rectify the damage ie issuing corporate statements and press releases etc.

I also had a colleague who was sacked from the company after complaining on Facebook about another colleague. Nintendo is not overreacting in this case. Social media is a curse to humanity. Or people should learn when it's appropriate to make comments.