Given how almost everything we post online can be screencaptured, it’s probably not a good idea to post stuff that can bite you back in the ass someday. That’s what appears to have happened to Apex Legends Lead Balance Designer Daniel Klein, who confirmed he was terminated by Respawn Entertainment today due to the stuff he posted online back in 2007.
Below, you’ll see screegnrabs of some of the stuff Klein has posted (thanks, Thordan Smash!), which includes a conversation with a friend online, and another where he posted a bunch of about women on his “humor” blog.
Over on Twitter, Klein confirmed he was terminated, and aplogized to his earlier statements. He has since locked his profile, but here’s a screengrab of his tweets (thanks, Biast12!:
Now, before anyone dogpiles Daniel Klein, I’d also like to point out that his wife suffered a miscarriage due to the situation, so please be considerate before tweeting or trying to engage the former Respawn developer.
- Related Reading: Apex Legends Cross-Progression Out 2022; Level-Cap Increase Coming, But Wants to “Future Proof” It
While Klein’s earlier statements were indeed horrible, it was 14 years ago, and people do change. That said, that’s another story, for another day.
Do you think this is a justified termination or should Respawn just have talked to Klein and gave him a second chance? Let us know your thoughts down in the comments below.
If you want a recap of all this, Thordan Smash released a video about it which you can watch here.
Holy sht I thought this article is just overreacting but dude is legit crazy lmao
14 years ago.. 14 years ago you weren’t even born, kid. Imagine if we judged you based on what YOU did in 2007.
yea i know 2021 is the year of PC culture and SJW’s crap dude chill,
i’m just pointing out his old comment is legit crazy, him changing now or not is none of my business
lmao Zoom Zoom, kid. Someone REALLY does have some skeletons from 2007, huh? Best not to be too hypocritical, eh?
i’m genuinely confused
i’m neither defending nor supporting the guy, but why r you keep replying?
He also said you weren’t born in 2007 but also you have skeletons in your closet from 2007. Good luck with this one.
Snore is just being dumb now @ardly. Ignore him.
His IQ is low, he’s struggling to comprehend what you wrote so he just throws random buzz words in between the ad hominen attacks.
Desperate to call someone a child on the internet
it’s ironic the toxicity he poured out so freely in 2007 that probably negatively affected someone less famous is now recycling back into his life and negatively affecting him and his. Lesson here? Don’t be a sexist racist piece of shit looking for reactions, ya might not like the reactions you get or the consequences they reap.
“Probably negatively affected someone less famous” – Oh, did it probably? lol You pulled that entirely out of your ass. How much negative harm could these comments have caused, other than obviously the backlash? How many people even saw them, until now?
The lesson here is that society has become pathetic, petty and vengeful to the point of absurdity. The outrage mob and clickbait tards for acting like this is even a big deal, respawn for betraying their employee. All sad self important bastards, throwing stones in glass houses.
He was fired for butter level of spicy comments he made 12 fucking years ago. You likely know nothing about him, other than these comments but happy to judge from behind a keyboard and label him a blahblahbuzzword piece of shit? You arrogant tool.
The chilling effect has truly taken hold when GAME DEVS are being fired for fear of the wrath of the outrage mob over what amounts to jokes about women sucking dick from 12 years ago.
Everyone, don’t bother saying a single thing about anything to anyone. Just stfu, consume your fucking products and minimize all interactions with other human beings in case you lose your job 12 years later! Toe the overton-window line or “reap the consequences” even if the line changes over time so you never know what will suddenly become unacceptable (see: women don’t have penises).
I can see more harmful content spending 5 seconds on /pol/. There is more harmful content in a eddie murphy comedy stand up special from 30 fucking years ago. You sad cry baby little bitch asses. Jesus christ. Get over yourselves.
He said some pretty sexist things, and one racist thing from what was shown.
Definitely not something someone mentally stable says either. So the guy is either fkd in the head, or he really was trying to get a reaction out of people.
Either way he didn’t get fired because of his posts. He got fired because there’s a crack down on sexual harassment towards women in the gaming industry, AND he said some shitty things.
Yes every small decision you make may come back to bite you, just better hope it doesn’t, cause everyone has said some wild shit at one point. He’s just unlucky with the current circumstances and his job.
Today I learned the common words racist and sexist are considered buzz words by the intellectually bankrupt lmao
Here’s a life lesson for you, just because someone else does something morally worse than you, that doesn’t mean you are absolved of the bad you’ve done.
At this point they are little more than thought terminating buzzwords. Bland insults haphazardly applied and overused by idiots lacking the ability for honest engagement.
What he did (ie: typing words on the internet) wasn’t even on the scale of negative morality, never mind losing your job 12 years later for it.
It is just so much easier to throw out a few -ists and -isms in a flurry of faux moral superiority, sniffing your own farts while exclaiming “well the lesson here everyone, is sometimes you get what you deserve hufhufhuf” and then continue your life as a smug asshole. Oh, but he PROBABLY negatively affected someone right? So it is totally justified lol
“You can even be nasty and mean, but you don’t have to be racist or sexist.” LOL
Well said… If he should have been fired for anything, it would be for the crap he has said to fans of the games he works on.. even in the last few years.. But OC, in the current year, those are the only people you are allowed to tell off and attack.
You’re awful quick to judge. Any reason for that other than ignorance? Try not to spew any self-righteous bs in your answer please.
I’m not a saint nor ever claimed to be, but by the douchebag’s own admittance he committed racist and sexist words to writing just to wind people up.
That’s not an “excited utterance” while under some kind of stress that could be attributed to the culture someone was raised in. No, these were repeated moments where his intentions were to say toxic shit and he took no pause when seeing the hateful comments actually written out.
It’s not hard to be a decent civil person. You can even be nasty and mean, but you don’t have to be racist or sexist.
Mind you, I wouldn’t have fired him unless it became an issue. Like if I stumbled across it but his current work didn’t reflect it I’d be like whatev, but if it became an issue that couldn’t be resolved through mediation I’d have definitely let him go because the fact is he should have known better, end of story.
Can you really call a guy a douchebag for what he said in 2007 when both he and his partner now are both avid speakers to help minorities gain agency and space? I was a total piece of shit in 2007 too. Homophobic, sexist and transphobic. Now I’m out of the closet, in the trans community and avid speaker for gender norms to be broken so people can be happy however they are.
Am I a douchebag too? I’m sure I said things like that too. Is all my learning, all my pent up aggression and closeted feelings invalid because of things I said in the past over obvious ignorance and need for attention?
I’m all for firing abusers, but firing people without any nuance? Nah.
I’ll quote myself since you missed a whole paragraph
“Mind you, I wouldn’t have fired him unless it became an issue. Like if I stumbled across it but his current work didn’t reflect it I’d be like whatev, but if it became an issue that couldn’t be resolved through mediation I’d have definitely let him go because the fact is he should have known better, end of story.”
Yeah he should have known better and you should have too. You can have hate in your heart and not act on it. Like I wrote above, I would NOT have fired him had I found those comments on my own, despite the fact that I detest them. I can separate my feelings from my actions because I’m an adult.
You’re an awful human being for saying that he deserves to have his livelyhood ruined for dumb shit he said 14 fucking years ago. Go be a dunce somewhere else.
Have you tried not being a horrendous faggot, Rey?
You must be a woman.
*rollseyes*
As I said up a few comments.. You must be really young.. The absurd bullshit that goes on today is a very new thing. It’s only in the last few years that we stopped being able to handle hearing things we disagree with. Please don’t mistake the hyper fragility of modern times with anything sane or of real life consequence. This is simply an era of supreme derangement and narcissism, run by adult babies with the emotional maturity and ego of 4 year olds.
Looks more like people are being called out on their BS attitudes and the negative atmosphere they knowingly or unknowingly create, and I’m fine with that.
If that was the case then he would have already been gone, after years of exactly that aimed at the fans themselves, only not in jest, but insult. And again, we are talking about jokes 14 years ago, under different and much saner standards.. when people knew how to take a joke. What “negative atmosphere”?
Just a thought, the jokes weren’t funny in 2007 it’s just that 14 years ago the “social momentum” was in favor of the shitty jokes. 14 years passed, this guy is still a shit head because he was never challenged in a meaningful way and now that the “social momentum” has shifted away from his favor he is reaping what he sowed because he is still creating such a shitty atmosphere around him that someone or someones decided it was worth digging through 14 years of written records to find instances where his shitty personality was on display.
Again…. just a thought.
Are you talking about trump, cause it sounds like you are.
I’m talking about society in general.. and certain forms of fanaticism and hysterical intolerance from the left.
Condolence to his wife but let’s not forget what kind of an asshole of person he was even during the time he was a lead designer at Respawn, he didn’t listen to logical statements and facts presented by players and pursued to shut them up with his own “proud” thoughts. He was a lousy person before developer and the fact that he threw shits at his own player base so freely has come to bites him on the ass. Good riddance.
Bruh, why it was 14 years ago he just said some random shit in a year when that shit was acceptable idk but he shouldn’t have been fired imo…
Dude put saw fit to put some dumb shit down in writing and then broadcast it. It could have come back to bite him in the ass at any point. No way he forgot, so I imagine he may have been sweating this for years. The entire situation is unfortunate. Don’t get too comfortable with social media.
lol You must be really young.. The absurd bullshit that goes on today is a very new thing. (cancer) We’ve only stopped being able to handle hearing things we disagree with in the last ~5-8 years. We are in an era of supreme derangement and narcissism, run by adult babies with the emotional/ego maturity of a 4 year old.
No, dude. I am 44. I’ve been a professional s/w engineer since ’99. Being a moron would get you reprimanded or fired for decades. Has it become more strict? Yes. The guys that came 10-20 years before me got away with more, and they’ve told me as such.
What you’re talking about is the crowdsourcing of punishment. That is amplified by the internet, and is relatively recent advent. I am not going to get into that now. This dude got fired by his employer because they became aware his posts, not due to pressure.
He’s was an ass and no comedian — regardless, only an imbecile would post sh1t like that and have it traced right back to you. A professional should know better.
The world was a very different place in 2007. The internet was a very different technology in 2007. People have very short memories…
Apex Legends Lead Balance… balance in apex? Hahaha
That fact that he said all this in 2007 just further establishes my belief that cancel culture is the cancer of human civilization. I do not know why we keep letting these little cry babies get away with ruining peoples lives. People are allowed to change and grow, but they cant do that if there is always whiny little punks looking to ruin lives. 14 years ago is more than enough time to change as a person. absolutely disgusting what these people do to other humans and then call it “activism”… get out of here.
The idea of cancel culture is to weed out people who will stand against it. So they pick on the undesirables first. Eventually, it’ll get to the puritans here being white knights for lame jokes. These people are so clueless if they heard the same stuff from Dave Chappelle they’d laugh their head clean off.
Was he working for respawn/EA in 2007? If so yes sure it could be a fireable offense.
If he was not working for them in 2007, then I would say this is a wrongful termination. If he hasn’t behaved in the same manner as he did in 2007 then it holds no merit for termination.
People change, he stated he has/tried to become a different person since 14 years ago.
You make a good point, but Apex Legends is owned by EA, and EA won’t take chances this guy might bite them in the ass and cause a scandal.
Plus, we don’t know if he has had any formal complaints lodged against him at the company, it’s possible he is still being a POS.
The comments are nothing. They’re absolutely nothing. You have zero idea just how many of these people you work with in a day. Went to school with.
He should have been fired for sucking at his job.
Yeah let’s fire people JUST INCASE they might do something. Sounds very logical.
None of these remarks are worthy of firing anyone outside of the workplace. You would pay to see this in a comedy movie. Businesses have no business enforcing speech through employment. That’s a messed up road you don’t want to go down. Then again, for those that clap for cancel culture? Have fun being next.
lol Apex has a balancing team?
good thing he was fired, it wasn’t working
also he is a piece of shit
so long, sucker
Definitely not worthy of firing. There are people who committed felonies including 2nd, 3rd degree murder, even rape less than 14 years ago who are allowed to work……..
People here are saying about 2007, but take a look at 2018 where he was working at Riot Games https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/9c6f9h/daniel_z_klein_is_calling_the_league_community/
Seems he didn’t change much from 2007 to 2018
Are you seriously putting “man babies” with slurs in the same level? Get o it of here with your cancel culture you dumb fucking ape
Yeah idk why the article didn’t mention that, seems super relevant, and a better reason to fire him than old tweets.
Why do you care?
Where’s the controversial remarks?
Under the first paragraph in the article?
Still not seeing them…
None, clearly exaggerated jokes you would see in a meme. The real crime is that they aren’t that funny, not everyone is funny.
If I could look through the lives of those who are clutching their pearls right now, I’d find the exact same stuff about other groups. Fire people because they suck at their job. Which he did. Woke crap was too far the first time it happened. It’ll just keep going until the puritans figure out they’re next in line.
Cancel culture needs to die. He had no reason to be terminated since what he said was 14 years ago and he didn’t work there back then. I don’t get how those cancel culture retards think it is ok to ruin a person’s life based on posts probably older than some of the witch hunters, and I also fail to comprehend how is it ok to harass the guy and his family for this.
Cancel Culture is fucking trash, fuck those cry babies. You caused a Miss carriage, fucking disgusting people. I hope all of you cancel culture supporters get **** ******.
Having a miscarriage is very painful to your heart, however its actually very hard for a woman to get pregnant, and also come to term. Alot needs to be right if it’s all going to work out. And crying actually helps the mental state of one being. but your last sentence wow bro how old are you. Pretty immature.
You actually believe online posts made someone miscarriage? Am I getting this right? White knights are the worst kind of people.
Cancel culture is a mainly right wing and elite lefty talking point. Words matter everyone can get a second or third chance as long as u can prove ur A sorry B willing to make amends C apologize to the people you hurt. You don’t get a get out of jail free card for saying sexist, racist, or generally disgusting and bigoted things.Now more then ever in gaming they need a safe work environment from these things.
Who did he hurt again? From the 14 year old comments I mean?!
Anyone who had their intelligence insulted by reading his blog back then, I’d argue.
When it’s years ago and has nothing to do with the company? Yes. That isn’t solving anything, it’s petty lashing out with immediate harm on one person while you can’t even prove harm done in reverse. Just that you read something spicy online and your poor little feelings have a boo-boo.
He should have been fired for being bad at his job.
There has to be more to this and it’s not just about hurting feelings its a safe work environment, Activision is example of this I highly doubt this is what got him fired alone.
I’m going to take a wild a guess and say no. It isn’t. It’s cancel culture running its course. Activision/Blizzard is what happens when the canceling makes it up top.
Most people cry unsafe work environment over the most minor of things. I’ve stopped believing it after I’ve worked real hard jobs.
I’ll give a crap about work environment when they’re not making 1.5 billion for a busted game.
Those comments are so old. If there is evidence of him STILL not changing from the past 5 years, then maybe. If he made remake like this while on the apex team, then yes this is justified. But 14 years ago I was playing Lego star wars the complete saga and thinking that heck was a curse word. My point is that that’s SO long ago, it may merit a small punishment or maybe require him to delete these posts, but overall this is just too far. It’s probably just a safety precaution due to the blizzard shit going down rn. Just caught in the crossfire.
This is straight bullS***! I do not know the guy predsonally but as a fan of the game and being older this has got to be one of the more disgraceful form of action the company can make. This was over 14 years ago! As apex legends here 14 years ago? Was this sensitive a** cancel cloture here 14 years ago? I mean really these generations are getting softer and softer! Just a plain disgrace to fore someone who worked hard as F*** to get to where they are today. Get a life and try to focus on yourself not break someone else down.
We surely are in the age of the clown….
I find it ironic that all the shit he said much later, including a few years ago, attacking the actual paying fans, was totally acceptable.. but the moment they find much older remarks, meant as jokes, about the “wrong” people, and poof.. The sky is falling! “OMG Fire him.. Quick before he….. well….. offends any other snowflakes with old jokes…….”
Clown era!
Feel really bad for his wife. Thoughts and prayers.
To be clear here.. He arguably had it coming.. Just not for the much older less serious reasons that caused it.
People forget that too. This guy was a clown with players and it’s obvious he doesn’t even play much for games. Or understand them. This guy’s logic for balancing certain items is ridiculous. He does not look at any relevant information at all.
Respawn and EA are one of the most prolifically woke companies existing today, so no suprise here. What was written 14 years ago has any bearing in what’s happening now is absurd, but with the politically correct and sheer left winged ideology with these corporate woke factories, it’s no suprise. Just take a look at apex, virtue signalling city or what
Fucking tragic. If there was a record of everyone’s thoughts and things they said prior to social media, no one would have a job. Get over it. If you find a tweet from 14 years ago offensive, you have much bigger things to work through.
Its time to take this energy that fights empty offences and redirect to the real issues in the world. Look at 80% of the countries still using slavery, economic issues, poverty on a global scale… starting at 14 year old tweets is not helping…
I’ll be stopping all money towards this game company and refuse to play any of their products until they wake up and smell the coffee. Or just never again while they waste money and energy on useless issues.
Times change, people change, but why go after a women? Men, males, need to be held accountable. What was once a joke in the male crowd, isn’t anymore, and for good reason. Men if you can call them that need to grow up. It’s not the left wing ideology, nor right wing ideology, it’s not cancel culture, it’s not a mandate! Grow up hold your self accountable for once! Some men, boys, snowflakes what ever, do happen to mature, but in my opinion very few. Males don’t always learn how to respect a woman, and if there’s no father figure or mother, well good luck. You run yourself short by just saying it’s the cancel culture or it’s the liberals, do you even know the definition of a liberal thinking person? Remember the Republican trump people attacked the Capitol not the left liberals. Everyone wants respect ,dignity, and if you’re a person that’s mature and honest with yourself, you wouldn’t post stuff like that, nor talk so awfully about a female. I like playing seer, hopefully they don’t take away to much of his power. See you on the field.
Actually it’s still a joke and those of you that want to cancel people for things said forever ago (or even today) are pathetic.
Men built the world you enjoy. Stop complaining, you have it good. Better than 99% of people that are living and have lived.
hope she sees this bro
You have way too much beta male blue pill in you. You will finish last every time.
The reason for firing him is nonsense. It has nothing to do with the company and it was ages ago.
He should have been fired for sucking at his job. That’s just a fact.
Nah, let it go. It was fourteen years ago, people change a lot in that time. If you said this shit was like a year ago or so, maybe I could be convinced if there was evidence of little growth, but fourteen years? Give the dude his damn job back. All that really needed to happen is have him publicly acknowledge it and announce that you’ll be keeping an eye on the situation in case he’s still a shithead. I want real shitheads to face consequences, not people who did dumb stuff a long time ago, on this situation no one needed to get their life ruined.
*cough* twitch *cough*
Strange that Lena Dunham still has a career even after admiting to sexually abuseing her sisters as a child. Amber Heard has a career even thought thier is evidnce she is an abusers .Strange how women can be vile toxic and nasty but do not lose thier carreers when they are .
Dude, that comment could get you fried in the future :/
PS: half joke
Will be hard to fire me. 😉
True. Can’t fire the unemployed & unemployable LMFAO
To be fair, a lot of people tried to get Amber Heard fired but the studio ignored it, and there was evidence of her being a shitty person but the studio decided to keep her and also women are usually seen has innocent and weak by society (wich affects every aspect when it comes how women and men get treated), so most of the time there will never be the same repercussions for a women, as there are for men.
Fuck him let him go, he was a shit balance designer anyways.
I think termination was an overreaching reaction to something that was ancient history, unless the same behavior was continuing. There has to be some sort of statute of limitation, as there are with most crimes other than murder, and his words certainly didn’t kill anyone. Even criminals are given a 2nd chance or let out early for good behavior.
Lmao based
I guess this just goes to show that your past actions can come back to bite you in the a**. 😞 Sorry to hear about his wife, that is very heartbreaking.
Of course he should have a second chance. Dang. People say a lot of stuff and this was 14 years ago. We all make mistakes. Do we have to crucify everyone who says something we don’t agree with….over a decade ago?
It’s one thing to say something you “don’t agree with”. It’s another thing to show open hostility towards marginalized groups and care enough to post it online and apparently not even want to delete it. People act like it’s just words, but nobody talks like that about entire groups of people and then turns around and treats those people fairly/ with respect when they actually encounter them. Maybe, if people are watching.
Do I think the dude should be fired over it 14 years later? Not really. But I definitely understand why respawn wouldn’t want to be associated with that. And, if you can get fired for a picture of you smoking a bong 14 years ago (which you certainly can), then you should also get fired for being a racist and sexist asshole 14 years ago.
Moral of the story? Don’t post stupid shit online. Keep your racist, sexist, bong smoking bs to yourself. Believe it or not, there are people on this planet besides straight white dudes who don’t want to have to see and hear that shit everywhere we go. I swear, the human race is not evolved enough to have had the general public just be exposed to the internet
I don’t think he knew everything he ever said in private would be recorded and aired out 14 years ago tho.
It wasn’t private. A lot of it was on a blog. He publicly posted a bunch of this garbage and he deserves the backlash he gets for it. He often talked about women being inferior, dumb, and not fit for existence in general without the help of a “man”. He believed all of that to be humor.
He is a white man. No one cares about him. Fire his ass. lol
Racist ass.
Respawn are indirectly responsible for the death of an unborn child.
Give this man his job back. For starters it has been, 14 years since 2007 and a lot can happen in that time frame. Secondly, it’s literally on a humor post
Thirdly cancel culture ruins everything and we need to stand up to it. You have women in 2021 saying far worse than he did, yet I don’t see any of them getting cancelled. The whole internet fired off at amber heard and she still kept her job after it was found out she was abusive. This one sidedness in the media is getting out of hand and disgusting.
If you look at my pic, I’m black, I didn’t find that African joke funny nor offensive. I think people are just sensitive. You see much worse getting said about people that seems to go without being checked.
“notice my black profile pic I definitely didn’t steal from Facebook” sounds fishy. Anyway, I’m black, and that was some offensive shit. Do I think he should be fired over it 14 years later? Nah. But everything else you said sounds like Russian Bot™.
wtf? nobody asked he should be fired just for the fact he can’t do his job properly glad he got fired was waiting for this shit
wtf? nobody asked he should be fired just for the fact he can’t do his job properly glad he got fired was waiting for this shit
You might be black but that right wing rhetoric is white as fk.
This is absolutely an overreaction. This was 14 years ago. That might as well be a lifetime ago
I think this is just another big reason to nerf Wattson.
The worst part of the entire situation is that this pussy apologized…
This just gave them an excuse to do what should’ve been done the day before they hired him….. Forget about him
What everyone here is missing is that he was very antagonistic with the community of videogames he worked on, from League of Legends to Apex and he was the guy who approved Seer the most broken Legend ever released, and then he tweeted very bad takes on how Seer is balanced.
He lost his job because he was shit at his job, this whole 14 year old posts is just a cover up.
Respawn cant straight up admit they caved to the community backlash or that they employed someone who cant do the job.
These posts were insurance that they finaly used to fire someone who was causing problems for them.
Now to not be a total dick, i agree no social media post from 14 years ago should be grounds for firing. Warning and a pay cut? Maybe, but not firing.
I wish him the best in finding a new job, and hope his wife and him can manage with the grief of miscarriage.
yea he shouldn’t be a balancer, everyone fucking hated that guy because hw doesn’t know how to balance shit, i feel like that was just a excuse to fire him because he wasn’t doing his job
yea he shouldn’t be a balancer, everyone fucking hated that guy because hw doesn’t know how to balance shit, i feel like that was just a excuse to fire him because he wasn’t doing his job
Nah, people need to stop firing people for crap like this. Obviously, I’d expdct this from respawn, the flaming garbage pile that they are, but I still disagree.
Firing someone for something they said 14 years ago is basically stating that people cannot change and should not be allowed to grow and learn. If he still held these beliefs, of course fire him. However, I believe no real change in society will occur until people are allowed to make a change for the better and be forgiven for past mistakes. Especially from a decade and a half ago.
You at age of 3 yo. Bite finger of your brother now at age of 30 you should be fire…
Somehow this became an argument on how seer is OP, Alex literally said a while back that they wanted a legend to come out more powerful not because they want to keep the legend as it is, but to tweak it to be a great lekgllgend over all and it creates a different play style that you cant get if every legend starts off weak or bland
It fucking crazy that people really think racist and dumbass people change cause they don’t and if he still saying dumb shit than he still feel these same ways today best believe. He said what he said and meant it simple so he deserves what ever comes from it it’s called being responsible.
It fucking crazy that people really think racist and dumbass people change cause they don’t and if he still saying dumb shit than he still feel these same ways today best believe. He said what he said and meant it simple so he deserves what ever comes from it it’s called being responsible.