Critical Role issued a statement to deny not paying a sensitivity reader.
The hugely popular D&D stream explains that an individual voluntarily offered advice and concerns around their own experience dealing with online bullying.
However, when that person asked for work, they were refused. As the individual was never offered a job, never hired, never given a contact.
Critical Role explains they took the allegations seriously, and an outside counsel investigated them extensively.
However, in a public tweet, an artist with the handle @losebetter says that they were not contacted as part of the investigation.
Of course, if the outside counsel’s remit was just to determine whether or not a contract, even a verbal one, could have been in place and this could be determined through the log files of the text communication, then there may be no need for the counsel to contact anyone else. It may merely have been a legal examination of the text.
We can only speculate.
It isn’t the only time Critical Role have had to deal with controversy. In 2019, the team ran one sponsored episode with Wendy’s to promote the RPG Feast of Legends released by the chain as a marketing promotion.
Some fans disliked the sponsorship. Other fans thought Wendy’s had no place in the world of tabletop RPGs. While other fans accused Wendy’s of not doing enough to help farmers.
It was that latter point which seemed to strike home for the Critical Role team. The team deleted the episode and donated proceeds.
At the time, Matt Mercer tweeted to say that the world is full of complicated and delicate choices, the ramifications of which you will not know until they are made.
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