Officially I stopped working for GamingBolt on the 7th of June this year. The circumstances that led to me leaving have, until now, been kept under wraps. The reason I’ve kept quiet for so long, is because I didn’t want the situation to reflect badly upon me – after all, it could look like I was smearing the site because I was fired. This isn’t the case.
The reason I’ve decided to take action is because of the multiple threats I’ve received from the site’s owner. Now I don’t like bullies – I never have – and I’ve met many men like Rashid Sayed in my time before. I used to manage a nightclub and get daily idiots saying, “Do you fucking know who I am?” That’s Rashid Sayed. He sits at his computer in India, hammering out threats on his expensive PC, paid for by the free labor he gets from 90% of his staff.
The reason I was fired, is because Rashid commissioned me to review The Last of Us for the site. He managed to get hold of a copy earlier than I – somehow – and decided to take it upon himself to write it. Rashid isn’t a writer. This is evident when he describes TLoU as having many “humdinger situations”. The main problem wasn’t shit writing, though, it was in the fact that he spoiled most of the plot, including the prologue and the reason Ellie needs to travel across America.
This led to Sony emailing me, asking what the fuck I was playing at, to which I replied, “I have never broken an NDA, and the site’s owner decided to write this particular review in the end so please take it up with him.” I thought this was pretty fair – it was true, after all. I don’t know what Sony said to him, but he sent me an email the next day calling me “self-serving” and saying I’m “not a team player”. What the fuck did he want me to say? I wrote it? Fuck that, man.
We exchanged a few heated emails, and he asked me to not mention the situation on Twitter, which I didn’t. Even after getting this email from him where he subtly threatened my career. He said he had friends in high places, so I asked why he has 15 followers on Twitter, naturally.
Even after this, though, I kept quiet about the whole, messy situation. It was only when today I was involved in a conversation about ethics and working for free when I mentioned him in a Tweet indirectly. I pointed out to a colleague on Twitter that Gamingbolt get hits in the millions each month and has an Alexa rank in the 20,000s, yet Rashid doesn’t pay most of his writers. He paid me, eventually, but told me not to tell anyone else as I was the only staff member paid for reviews – because I gave an ultimatum. So, in my Twitter conversation I may have had a moment of weakness and called him a “tight fucker”, but we don’t follow each other anymore so I assumed it would go unnoticed. Wrong. He obviously still stalks my profile on a regular basis because, shortly after, I received this email.
Notice the use of italics for drama.
I didn’t reply to it. Instead I decided the guy has issues – he can’t keep going round threatening people and I’m probably not the first or last person he’s done it to. Bullies like this need to be stamped out, so I decided to shine a spotlight on this motherfucker before he tries it on someone a bit less… well, verbal than I. I’m a stray dog, you see. And what do stray dogs do? They bite you in the fucking ass.
Note the wrong usage of “effecting”.
