Saber CCO says the studio isn’t changing up its comms strategy after recent controversies: ‘There’s always some dust up’

In a recent interview with PC Gamer’s Joshua Wolens at this year’s Gamescom, Saber Interactive CCO Tim Willits admitted the studio’s leadership had a reputation for saying precisely what it means—”sometimes we ‘say what we mean’ too much,” he laughed. But when asked if recent controversies would change the studio’s comms approach, he said “no.”

“I’ve been in the industry for so long, and there’s always some dust up,” Willits explained. “People got mad at Saber because we put World War Z on Epic, and people were like, ‘oh, Saber’s destroying the industry.’ Now 30 million people have played World War Z. And the games will speak for themselves, even in our experiment with Rideshare [Stimulator].”

If you haven’t been keeping up with the latest drama Saber Interactive has courted, here’s the skinny: former Saber Interactive writer Stella Sacco claimed she was fired and replaced with AI during the development of Rideshare Stimulator.

Saber’s comms department initially put out a fairly benign statement disputing the details of the claim, but CEO Matt Karch subsequently issued a statement to This Week In Videogames that was both aggressively pro-AI, and personally insulting to Sacco.

Karch apologized privately to Sacco before releasing a statement reflecting on the incident which itself contained a targeted barb for a different games industry writer that has since been edited.

All that might sound like an avalanche of unforced errors on Saber’s part, but Willits said Rideshare Stimulator will speak for itself regardless of any concerns about AI and Sacco’s treatment. “I encourage people to check it out when it comes out, play it themselves,” Willits said. “They may be like ‘oh, this is cool! I like this,’ you know. And if they don’t like it, fine.

“We are going to stick to making the best games we can. Try to show them, give people an opportunity to play them, and have players make their own decisions because players are smart, you know. You make a good game, they’ll find it and play it.”