Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford under fire for tweets about animal abuse

Bill Cooney

President and CEO of Gearbox Software Randy Pitchford added to the already-substantial controversy surrounding himself when he quote-tweeted a video of a kitten crying in pain after being pinched by a large crab.

Gearbox is the studio behind the upcoming Borderlands 3 game, but Pitchford seems to have attracted attention for everything except his company’s latest game recently.

Pitchford decided to share the video, which was originally posted on a now-suspended Twitter account called DAILY KITTEN, on March 27 and it didn’t take long for people to voice their objections.

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“Why don’t you just promote your game?”

A lot of followers said that Pitchford’s decision to share the video had changed their minds about purchasing the upcoming Borderlands 3.

Several people wondered why Pitchford decided to post the video at all, before the Gearbox CEO followed up his original tweet and claimed that he shared the video as a sort of social experiment.

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His follow-up tweet quickly got ratio’d and many of the tweets urged Pitchford to seek mental help, amongst other things.

YouTuber TheQuartering attacked Pitchford for sharing the tweet in a video shortly after the whole thing happened, “I get it, at the end of the day on the scale of important things to be mad about, I understand that this is low,” he said in the video, before adding, “Randy Pitchford is an idiot, why don’t you just promote your game?”

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An interesting year for Pitchford

2019 has been a wild ride for the Gearbox CEO. In January, he was accused by the company’s former general counsel – with whom the company is currently involved in a lawsuit with – of possessing underage pornography.

Pitchford denied the allegations and even though nothing happened from the claims, it’s definitely not the kind of attention Gearbox wants their CEO attracting while they try to build hype for their latest game.

About The Author

Bill is a former writer at Dexerto based in Iowa, who covered esports, gaming and online entertainment for more than two years. With the US team, Bill covered Overwatch, CSGO, Influencer culture, and everything in between.