The voice of Borderlands' Claptrap, David Eddings, is going public with allegations of abuse and underpayment against Gearbox and its CEO, Randy Pitchford. The allegations, which have drawn partial denials from both Pitchford and company spokespeople, open up a new front in some messy PR and legal battles for the company and its corporate leader.
The latest war of words started when Eddings, who also worked as a Gearbox VP of business development until 2017, said he wasn't reprising his vocal role as the robotic Claptrap in the upcoming Borderlands 3 because, "for the first time, I insisted on getting paid for my performance and all of a sudden they couldn't afford me."Eddings also made reference to the $12 million executive bonus Pitchford allegedly took, according to a January lawsuit, without his employees' knowledge.
In a statement to IGN, a Gearbox spokesperson said that "Gearbox works to treat and compensate all voice actors at industry standards. We offer the opportunity for salaried employees to voice characters in the game, but is not a mandatory responsibility to their job requirements. In this particular case, now that he was no longer an employee, we offered him an industry-standard rate, but were not able to reach an agreement. We are confident and happy with Jim Foronda as the voice of Claptrap, and we are confident our fans will be too.”
But Pitchford added to that official response the next day on Twitter saying that Eddings "was offered 2x scale - twice union rates. He refused the offer." He added in a follow-up that "Eddings is bitter and disgruntled about having been terminated... I don’t want him to do it unless he wants to do it, as motivation affects performance."
Eddings fired back yesterday in a Twitter thread saying that he had offered to come back as Claptrap for "free," provided Gearbox pay "past royalties owed plus an apology for something I’ve never spoken about publicly until now: Randy physically assaulted me in the lobby of the Marriott Marquis at GDC 2017." The thread goes on to allege that Pitchford was "stalking [Eddings] on social media" and that Eddings is "happy to be free from the half-truths and full-on deceptions, and thankful to no longer hear people referred to as 'muggles' like a con-man refers to a 'mark.'"
A 2K/Gearbox spokesperson was not immediately available to respond to these latest allegations.
Eddings' comments come after Pitchford said last month that voice actor Troy Baker, who played Rhys in the Borderlands games, was "told by the audio director that he turned [the role] down" for Borderlands 3. Baker later said in an interview with OnlySP that he "would love to come back" to the series but had been rejected for the role by Gearbox. "I would fact check before I tweeted out to the Internet," Baker said at the time in reference to Pitchford's tweet.
The news also comes amid an ongoing, wide-ranging lawsuit against Gearbox from former general counsel Wade Callendar. The suits allege fraud and breach of fiduciary duty on Gearbox's and Pitchford's parts, including allegations that Pitchford "abused the privilege of credit card access by charging unapproved, wholly personal expenses, including family vacations, gun club memberships and firearms accessories, and trying to get six-pack abs.""The allegations made by a disgruntled former employee are absurd, with no basis in reality or law,” Gearbox said in response to those lawsuits. “We look forward to addressing this meritless lawsuit in court and have no further comment at this time.”
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