Jennifer Scheurle, the now former-lead designer for Guild Wars 2 and ArenaNet, has been let go from the company as part of an alleged “re-shuffling of projects.”
Scheurle broke the news of her departure on October 14th, informing her followers on Twitter that she had “lost my job at ArenaNet as of today as part of a re-shuffling of projects” and was now “looking for a job as a Game Designer pretty much immediately.”
“I need to find a job that takes over my visa within the US within 60 days,” explained Scheurle. “Otherwise I need to leave the country.”
According to Scheurle, she was “laid off on the spot” in what she described as a “traumatizing experience” wherein she was “locked out of my work computer within 10 minutes and I didn’t even get a chance to say goodbye to my colleagues.”
Aside from her game design work, Scheurle is perhaps best known for her campaign against the honoring of Atari co-founder Nolan Bushnell by the Game Developers Conference, wherein she alleged that various women had come to her with stories claiming Bushnell fostered a sexist and misogynistic workplace environment at Atari in the 1970s.
However, when pressed for the names of Bushnell’s accusers, Scheurle refused to provide any names, saying “You don’t understand. I don’t have to prove anything to you and neither do they. It is your job to practice empathy to an experience that might differ from your own.”
Earlier this year, she falsely accused an innocent man of committing vehicular assault against a pair of Black Lives Matter protestors in Seattle, claiming that the incident was an example of “white supremacy and domestic terrorism” despite being presented with evidence to the contrary.
In June, Scheurle garnered widespread criticism after stating that her “worst nightmare” was for men falsely accused of misconduct to have “all the receipts ready to discredit” their accusers.
Scheurle concluded her thoughts on her departure by thanking “all [the] absolutely wonderful people” who reached out to her and directed recruiters “with an in interest in hiring me” to contact her through LinkedIn.
