Alexis Kennedy, the co-founder of Weather Factory who was accused of professional misconduct in 2019, has spoken up about what's been going on since the allegations were first issued. His post describes a long-standing feud with the management of Failbetter Games, the company he formerly founded in 2009.
Since he wrote his initial rebuttal to the allegations, Alexis claims that he's been trying to speak with Failbetter and try and prove his innocence. In the emails he tried sending, he mentions means such as a GDPR request to get his personal records to disprove the claims, formal mediation between him and Failbetter, and hiring a third-party investigation into the allegations. However, Adam Meyers, the current CEO of Failbetter, has rejected these offers multiple times. Things get more complicated when Alexis Kennedy explains that due to some oddness with the UK legal system and how the IP for Fallen London was transferred, Alexis may "still probably, technically" be the owner of Failbetter. Alexis informed Failbetter of this issue, and they stopped replying to Alexis' emails entirely.
Last week, Alexis sent Failbetter one last email, detailing a list of disputes that he hopes to get settled, whether relating to the 2019 allegations, the fact that he isn't credited for Fallen London and spin-off projects, and the issue of Fallen London/Failbetter's uncertain ownership. Just like before, this email was met with silence from Failbetter. Alexis Kennedy suggests that this bad blood may stem from December 2017, when Failbetter laid off a quarter of its staff. Alexis wound up siding with those who were previously told their jobs were safe and elected not to be anonymous when talking to Eurogamer. His suspicions on this come from when he requested the GDPR and received two items: a PDF of a column his parter wrote that briefly mentioned the Failbetter layoffs and a Discord chat log from the Cultist Simulator fan Discord when Alexis mentioned the Eurogamer article.
"Take some damned responsibility," Alexis says to Failbetter's senior management at the end of his post. "Show some leadership and some responsibility. We can still fix this."
Update: Tuesday, July 27 11:12AM - A small change has been made to more accurately reflect the nature of the allegations made against Kennedy.
