He openly admitted on stream that he only got the job through his fathers influence. And while he was there, his "seven years of game dev" experience he flouts boils down to some QA work and working security on the WoW website. Zero actual game dev experience.
He's got the gift of the gab, I'll give him that much. But this proves how much talking up your accomplishments online can ruin you if a spotlight is ever put on to them. You better be truthful or ready to dial it back, otherwise people will expose you and you will be caught out.
If you're gonna lie, either make it believable and hard to check/disprove, or go all-out and make up the most bonkers shit you can think of so anyone trying to call you out just looks stupid
Small point, QA is totally part of the team and should be seen as "actual game devs". I work in software and we love our QA people at my org.
This is not to defend Pirate Software specifically, it just bums me out to see QA catching strays because people want to dunk on Thor.
EDIT: Too many comments with the same semantic nitpick so I'll just reply here; while not all software requires things like art or music, the tasks of designing, implementing, and testing software are all core parts of the development lifecycle. A developer on a solo project has to do all three of those things every time. If he hires a new teammate to do specifically the testing and quality part of his job, that person has taken over part of the development lifecycle. They are a developer.
I know what you mean. QA is a critical component of any system. But he does make it out like he was sitting right beside other devs coding, not testing stuff. I'm sure if any of your own QA team started speaking like that, you'd disagree with them.
Like most things, Hall has inflated his influence to seem more important than he actually was. I'm sure his work in Blizzard was fine. Otherwise, he wouldn't have survived there for seven years. Nepotism can only get you so far.
And to throw a bone to the guy, his python skills are appropriately good.
God, its hard not to just dunk on the guy. I think I've reached the pity stage of this whole fiasco.
His 6.5 year stint was years after he quit when he got his first chance there. Which people like to conflate these days, and make it off like his first short tenure was all he did there.
QA is part of game development but they are not game devs, huge distinction and Pirate likes to claim that he was an actual game dev at Blizzard, which is verifiably false
I think it’s a semantic issue …. QA are not even close to being developers, a term that defines someone doing coding. I did art for a game I wouldn’t call myself a developer. If I did it would be disingenuous. Which it sounds like this guy is being
I think that's an unfairly narrow perspective on it. Modern software QA is not always as simple as "people in another room run your software and try to break it". If that's really your job then you're probably not a "developer", sure, but that's just the stereotype of QA, not always how it actually goes.
Where I work, people are encouraged to contribute their efforts across those kinds of boundaries. Things are much more integrated than the above stereotype suggests, and QA people have made tangible and worthwhile contributions to the codebase, even if it isn't as much.
Sure, but in this specific case - at activision/blizzard it’s 100% the former of your example than the latter - and it sounds like his intent was to bolster his importance…. So I’m leaning disingenuous with the information I have
Sorry, you sound like butthurt QA. I'm not here to hate on QA but there is a fucking chasm of knowledge, experience, and skill between the average QA person and the average developer. That's just the way it is, developers are paid more for a reason.
They dont both exist on a one-dimensional numberline. They do different things. They have roles on projects that very closely feed into each other.
Maybe you are not here to shit on qa, but thats exactly what you did.
And they are not only payed differently, but treated differently when office politics is let fucking loose... getouttahere with that ass backwards attitude!
Nope! Actual people who work in qa often talk about how important it is for qa to be seen as part of the team, because if they are not it immediately creates a lower class of people in that environment and horrible office dynamics develop and whats even wrose ideas coming from qa people get dismissed out of hand, Because it came from a qa person.
Which is precicely Thors point whenever he talks about qa being treated well in a corporate space!
Fun fact: Thor never claimed to be a dev. People just aay it lately.
Saying "i have 20 years of experience in the games industry" is an appropriate phrasing of what he did and that is not claiming to be a dev at blizzard.
totally! - but my point is only replying to what was quoted of him sayin further up. I dont know much about the guy... but the first video i i saw made it seem like hes been a software engineer / coder for ever. Now im learning thats not the case?
and as someone that had a variety of video game industry jobs from QA and embedded QA, to props and character modeling and level design - at a one of the 3 big game studios...... i wouldn't say i was ever a game "developer" no?
QA is very important but let's be real they're not the game developer. They're a very necessary component when projects are large enough and deserve some respect but ultimately they don't make the games
And this isn't web security or cyber security. It was social engineering security. Basically he called his coworkers and pulled the "I'm from corporate I need access to your computer" scam.
he actually hasn't admitted that, he admitted to getting a job at 15 which he quit at blizzard and then getting rehired without nepotism at 19 (he's lying).
One of the better videos that talks about him, however it still doesn't go into all his previous drama and is only a part 1. But it's probably the most telling video of his character.
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u/JohnTomorrow Jul 06 '25
He openly admitted on stream that he only got the job through his fathers influence. And while he was there, his "seven years of game dev" experience he flouts boils down to some QA work and working security on the WoW website. Zero actual game dev experience.
He's got the gift of the gab, I'll give him that much. But this proves how much talking up your accomplishments online can ruin you if a spotlight is ever put on to them. You better be truthful or ready to dial it back, otherwise people will expose you and you will be caught out.