Hey. I saw this being posted about on Reddit so I wanted to put it here where it could reach Ross. Sorry if this isn't the best way to do it.
Now, on paper this interview is a slam dunk for SKG. I mean, I personally don't agree with Marty's politics, but that goes to show how SKG is so bipartisan. Left, right, whatever. Everyone's against this thing.
The issue is if you do any diving into Marty's history, there's some real rough things that reflect poorly on being associated with SKG.
The main one I'll point to is the Music Of The Spheres debacle. Marty wanted to show off some unused music from Destiny, and rightly so- it's some of his best work. So he uploaded it to youtube and shared it around. Bungie saw this, wanted revenge and sued Marty, blocked all access and were showing just how being under sony had changed Bungie.
That's the public story that was often shared around. but if you roam around the bungie circles you'll see it's a lot more manipulative and insidious.
I'm going to be going off some old news articles on the time and some reddit comments simply because the original thread was nuked due to Marty being banned from the destiny and bungie reddits for being extremely toxic holier then thou and advertising his stolen work for people to buy.
https://knockout.chat/thread/28636
https://www.eurogamer.net/former-bungie-composer-marty-odonnell-found-in-contempt-of-court-over-use-of-destiny-assets
So, the actual story was Marty did release these sketches and samples, but also monetized the crap out of it. Using youtube ads, selling them on bandcamp; etc etc. Not just of Destiny, but a bunch of Microsoft owned music. Marty did NOT own the rights to these, but the argument of Artists owning what they worked for at a company is a much more big grey area and something I do support. The issue is, he sold music by other artists without permission Music of the spheres and halo weren't just his creations. Michael Salvatori was there the entire time from the start with Halo 1. Heck, apparently Paul McCartney worked on the album- but I assume that part wasn't released by Marty because there's no way abbey road records would let him live that down. Anyway, I think this is pretty cut and dry. There's no grey area for someone taking assets they don't own, from someone else and selling it for profit.
The big issue here is SKG is a rights issue at the end of the day. Having someone supporting it who also did something awful in relation to rights is not a good look for SKG. People against SKG are using whatever they can to slander the org, and this is a big yummy conflict of interest. SKG founder talks and supports a person who sells peoples work without asking? That's a bunch of clickbait videos from that title alone ready to go.
It's a bad look at a time where SKG really doesn't need an extra push. It's practically growing on it's own and would of been fine regardless of Marty's involvement. Marty's issues SO radioactive that Microsoft, in developing the Halo 1/2 remasters outright banned any of their sound team to work with Marty or contact him for anything. The guy who was known as the halo composer was too much of a concern and was practically blacklisted from supporting the team or putting any contact in because of just how bad Marty was to work with and was too much of a loose canon. This happened before all of this happened, but there's a lot of other stuff Marty's done that's not a good look going all the way back to 2002. I'm focusing on the monetization issue because that's the thing that's at direct issue with the stop killing games initiative.
What he did was basically like EA deciding to one day sell a bunch of fan-art of their games without permission or knowledge from the artists. They'd be burned at the stake online for that. Just because they made the game the art was based on doesn't give them a right to sell that work.
TLDR; Not a left or right political issue, Marty is a bad person to have in any debate over rights and this will cause damage to SKG and give people against the initiative plenty of weapons to work with to try and damage it's reputation, which they've been able to do already without even having any good standing to be on. Now they have something.
Please, Ross. You gotta vet these guys a little better.