And actually apologized: "sorry for what I said", not "sorry if anyone was offended by what I said". I still don't think it looks good for him - apologies only mitigate, not erase - but that's the right response. If he follows up with a "it was a stressful transition and I was afraid that Pierce's understandable legal concerns would sour the whole deal and frankly I drank way too much", all the better.
On twitter, it looks like he apoligzed: "sorry for what I said ... no excuses." But then he e-mails VentureBeat with--you guessed it--a bunch of excuses:
When the game blows up ... and one employee, who didn’t work on the product,
and is more about his own games then the team, jumps in the press and becomes
the story, it is very hurtful to all the people who are on team.
[W]hen you give blood, sweat and tears on something and someone who doesn’t
even work on the project, and prioritizes his own games as his own professional
development over the team, becomes the story it is very demoralizing.
[M]y point is that it wasn’t about Shay. It was about the 41 other people who
made it happen. Those are the people I would throw myself in front of the
train for and those are the people I want to celebrate.
So, to recap, Shay was fired (for refusing to accept a change in the terms of his employment) and wrote about it. Porter still seems to take offense that Shay wrote anything to distract from OMGPOP's preferred message, continues to call out Shay for not being a team player, and says he would throw himself in front of a bus for every OMGPOP employee except Shay.
He didn't apologize. After an apology, you need to back up your words with actions.
I dunno. Reading his longer explanation in VentureBeat, I'm not sure that's an actual apology. Being sorry for what you said's a little vague. I'd rather see something like:
"I apologize unreservedly to Shay Pierce. What I said about him was untrue and unkind. I regret that we X", where X is the mistake he feels he made in handling Pierce's situation.
