I remember a guy being fired because he jokingly told a friend to "deal with it" in a twitter conversation.

I don't remeber anyone crying out in his defense or critizising Microsoft for firing him.

People take every single oppurtinity they can take to hate on nintendo. Because apperantly they are a company you can just hate on. Its like instead of ''thanks obama (sarcasm)'' its instead ''thanks nintendo''. Some things nintendo do you should complain about, but any other company would fire her instantly if she remarks like this on twitter, Because she is a part face of Nintendo and Nintendo treehouse. Nintendo as a company is not one entity. There are very different people inside nintendo who think differently. Thats something i think people shouldn't forget.

Excellent points. I don't know see what the "controversy" is. People just need to stay away from Kotaku and their "news reporting".

I would also like to add that a person named Jamie Walton contacted NoA about Alison's pedophilia comments in which the supervisory line replied, "We will handle this IMMEDIATELY. Unacceptable." So to conclude that the pedophilia 'nonsense' is irrelevent is incorrect.

Even so, I don't believe that this opinion is grounds for firing. Like I said, she did not participate in child abuse and she did not condone child abuse. She made statements about the sexual agency of people under 18 (not entirely objectionable), the legal status of cartoon depictions of naked children, and how the focus of law enforcement should be on the ones creating child porn and not the ones in possession of it. None of those opinions are particularly harmful or even all that radical and they certainly are not condoning child abuse.

I don't disagree that there is a double standard in regards to pedophila, and I don't even really disagree that she shouldn't have been saying these things one of the public faces of Nintendo, just that this whole idea was blown up and stretched to make it seem like something it never really was.

@Aura: When I say "this pedophilia nonsense is irrelevant", I essentially meant that it should have been irrelevant, or at least a very minor part of the discussion to highlight her lack of professionalism, not to state that she was a danger to children and an abominable human being.

its not Nintendo's job to actively get involved in their employee's PERSONAL social media pages

its not as if Alison was being harassed as the face of Nintendo or something like that. I would argue that most big company's actually discourage their employees to be hugely active in social media (especialyl with personal opinions) as the opinions may not match up with the company.

in the end though we don't know why EXACTLY she was fired. It could have been that she was literally just poor at her job and the timing happened to be funny. or it could be that some of her comments (especially regarding child molesters) broke her contract. Bear in mind practically any large company will potentially fire someone for actively getting involved in political or sensitive conversation that could alienate a certain branch of consumers.

at any rate no one know exactly why she was fired so all of the judgement going on online about this seems a bit silly, regarding Nintendo. we don't know the full picture and likely never will well.  I hardly think Nintendo should be held responsible for the trolls that bugged her online though. Thats the risk of having a social media account online on the internet and being vocal- people might disagree with you and mess with you. its life. you can't expect Nintendo to run around and constantly vocally put out press releases that say "don't comment on so and so's social media!". Nintendo's logical answer if approached probably was the obvious: an employee should not use social media accounts if they can't control themselves in terms of expressing their political ideology's and arguing with people

not blaming her but its pretty simple when we're talking about a corporation in relation to their employee's social media stuff- its almost always in the contract to not do certain things on online forums

Go tell that to victims of child abuse, she's been advocating lighter punishments for those who possess or like child porn, that is indirectly harmful to victims as these people are still supporting and keeping a float a predatory industry by creating demand for thos producing it so yes it is harmful. People defending this woman wake up and stop being selective, go read her tweets she's also brought up real life child porn not just drawn images.

Telling people to let pedophiles be and give less punishment to those actively obtaining CP is condoning it or would you and her be comfortable having a kid and finding out your neighbour, kids teacher, baby sitter or whatever is into such a thing?

Opinions can get you fired and rightly so if they're harmful to anyone around you or the company's image, this is why the is a code of conduct when you join companies, just like she has to now you're accountable for your actions and words so don't be shocked if you're dismissed for courting controversy. It's not blown up and stretched it's the same reaction as if it was a man only here people are more willing to jump to her defence.

The people sending death threats because they can't adjust the size of a person's bust really need to reevaluate their lives.

However, you can't make that conclusion with absolute certainty. The NoA supervisory line's reaction to Jamie Walton's inquiry was very serious. It wasn't something like, "Thank you for reaching out to us. We'll address this with our employee."; it was "We will handle this IMMEDIATELY. Unacceptable." That kind of response strongly implies that she might have violated a certain clause in their contract or goes against Nintendo's philosphy. Whether you agree with that or not doesn't matter because Nintendo has the right to adhere to certain values and if an employee acts contrary to those values, the company will not tolerate that.

The only person responsible for Alison Rapp's firing is Alison Rapp. You can't expect to work in marketing / PR at a major world-wide corporation and not get fired for such activities as moonlighting with a 2nd job taking NSFW pics and spouting off the controversial stuff on social media that she did.

Predictably though, she's become a martyr for the SJW crowd after the initial Kotaku article framed this whole incident as another female in the gaming industry getting lynched by the "he-man women haters" GamerGate crowd. While there's no doubt there are some vile trolls out there, GG has transformed into the SJW crowd's universal boogeyman as a way to deflect criticism from one's own actions.