Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford Accused of Taking Secret $12 Million Bonus

Hoo boy. Where to start. Kotaku ran an article yesterday going into detail about how former general counsel of Gearbox Wade Callender and current CEO Randy Pitchford are suing each other. Gearbox, for those not as in the know in the gaming community, is the studio behind the mega-popular Borderlands franchise and being the ones to finally release Duke Nukem Forever.

The allegations as of today (in no particular order):

• Randy Pitchford received a secret $12 million bonus from Take-Two. The money was funneled into his own entity, Pitchford Entertainment Media Magic, LLC, instead of going to Gearbox staff.
• Wade Callender, the former general counsel, alleges Pitchford would hold parties where ‘adult men have repeatedly exposed themselves to minors, to the amusement of Randy Pitchford’.
• The biggest and most headline-worthy accusation comes from a 2014 situation where the Gearbox CEO left a USB drive in a Texas restaurant. The drive contained sensitive corporate documents with Gearbox partners, but also apparently Pitchford’s personal collection of ‘underage’ pornography.

Randy Pitchford told his side of the USB story on a magic podcast late in 2018. To avoid any potential misquotes, I am going to put an excerpt from the Kotaku article word for word down below:

“This is not a sex worker—this is a (expletive) magician,” he added, saying he had purchased one of her videos and put it on the USB stick. “Some kid, an employee of the Medieval Times, discovered this memory stick, took it home, and accessed it because it was before we were password-protecting, and discovered secrets of my company and future games in development, and also discovered the pornography. And it was barely legal porn. This girl’s handle was ‘Only 18.’”

So, um, there you have it. One of these things is not like the other. The legal battle is currently ongoing and both sides have only dug in their heels more since the court documents went public. I’m sure the updates won’t be going away anytime soon. We will have more information as new revelations are unearthed.

What are your thoughts on this Gearbox situation? Let us know in the comments below!

Maxwell Majernik

Max spends most of his days writing and trying to figure out if the Spawn game on Dreamcast was real or just a weird fever dream