I'm honestly so shocked to see how many people are writing off Gio's claims and acting like Hussie can do no wrong, or if they do, it's justified. I think it is in part easy to write off because of the title of Gio's article - in my opinion, this story is not particularly about the UHC being taken down (and when framed that way, the assertion is made, rightly, that it's still accessible and also Gio sucks, end of story).
This is a story of Andrew Hussie's entitlement toward the creative work of others, stretching all the way back to the early days. This is a story of how Andrew Hussie behaves when not able to control the behavior of others. This is a story among far too many of Andrew Hussie's continual weaponization of legal maneuvers to manipulate people. And in fact, it sure sounds to me like part of Gio's assertions of Hussie's shady behavior has already been confirmed in Miles' statement, where he said:
"gio was Not trying everything he could to make this work, because by his own admission in the article he refused to sign a license to continue to publish the Entirety Of A Body Of Work That Didn’t Belong To Him, and i also strongly suspect did everything in his power to dissuade bambosh from licensing when it was bambosh andrew was doing the initial negotiating with, Precisely Because We Were Worried About Situations Like This. at the time i actually thought that was TOO paranoid, believe it or not, but holy shit was i wrong about that, lol."
From Gio's article - In the messages from Miles during the early communication, Miles says that after giving Bambosh the NDA and a private conversation between them and Andrew, Gio would also receive an NDA and have a similar conversation, sort of an interview before the negotiations began. If it is true that no NDA was presented to Gio and Gio was not stalling, this was just an excuse to get Bambosh alone and not have to deal with Gio. Sure sounds like it tracks, at least to me. They cornered Bambosh, tried to only work with him and cut Gio out of the deal while weaponizing legal documents to do so. The NDA/non-NDA dynamic between Bambosh and Gio meant that they could not discuss the negotiations between them, and Bambosh then left the project.
Please don't think that just because Gio's article is dramatic, that it's not credible. To be honest, if I had been jerked around that much for that long I'd be pretty uncharitable too. The most credible part to me is how familiar it sounds. I know people are discrediting Gio and calling them biased...well, everyone has bias - I think it'd be worse had Gio pretended to not feel the way they feel about things at this point. The idea that language used with regards to abusive relationships is overblown - divide and conquer and DARVO are very real tactics people use to have power over others in many situations, like in cases of medical or financial abuse. Domestic violence is not the only arena in which these things happen.
Finally, I personally am not only interested in how Andrew Hussie treats their friends. I'm far more interested in how they treat people they don't respect. And the answer is...extraordinarily poorly and unprofessionally.
i never said that gio knowingly lies, but you have to admit he does not present his information in a way that paints the whole picture. you don't have to disagree or even lie to paint a picture to push a specific narrative. in this case, gio's narrative is to tell people to only trust his judgement and disregard all the work that MANY MANY people have put in it. just like he did. he claims hussie is trying to kill projects. is he not doing the same exact thing with his blog post? at the very end of his blog he writes:
to preemptively tell people to not use anything that the homestuck team might try to come up with.
miles has already refuted that andrew doesn't get any cut of the patreon:
but obviously barring them actually releasing full financial papers and doxing themselves people who don't like hussie will always claim it's not enough proof.
also note: hussie is mentioned repeatedly in the blog post with multiple mentions that hussie and gio have chatted yet no transcripts were written about what was actually said and we're just supposed to take it on faith.
anyway i searched through gio's article for more information about the lawsuit in particular and i'll admit i had also assumed it was libel, but there's not actually anything that states what he's being prosecuted for. is he actually getting prosecuted right now? if so, what lawyer would let him even publish all of this with an ongoing case?
i agree that hussie probably should have just ignored these people, but in the end he didn't and unfortunately now has to deal with the fallout of that. if i was in his position would i have the self control to not stop the people who are prompting the public to hate me and my friends? i don't know.
Okay, but that literally makes the problem worse. If the issue is the vitriol and unwanted visibility granted by Gio's article, Sarah Z's video and the allegedly-incorrect things in them, how would a LAWSUIT help anything? That makes everything more public, and if they don't have a case like you seem to agree is true, it will become extremely wide knowledge that Hussie and the people who associate with them are willing to launch a doomed suit to protect themselves from allegations they can't or refuse to disprove, which brings those allegations back into focus too. There's just no scenario where this is a good idea for Hussie, his associates or his series except the one where they have proof that Gio is secretly a cartoon supervillain, and I don't think they have that!
https://youtube.com/@DeepDiveDevin
