Saber's CEO Apologizes to One Writer, Then Picks a Fight With Another

Matthew Karch privately apologized to Stella Sacco for how he'd attacked her in the press, then used the same public statement explaining that apology to call a different writer "unsuccessful."

How This Got Here

This is the third piece tracking the Rideshare "Stimulator" saga, and the short version covers the ground fast. Sacco said she'd been pulled off the project and replaced with ChatGPT, Saber denied it, and Karch went well past a normal denial in his response, saying Sacco was "replaced by someone more talented," that she "enjoys controversy," and that he'd "frankly in retrospect have been happy to replace her with AI." The most recent turn in the story had Saber's denial arriving bundled with an admission that AI actually was in the game.

The Apology Was Real

On August 15, Sacco posted that Karch had messaged her privately and apologized without qualification for how he'd spoken about her in the press. She accepted it, and accepted it more graciously than the situation strictly called for, writing that apologies are too rare these days to turn one down when it's offered, and that she hoped it was the last statement she'd need to make on this. That would have been a clean way to close it out.

Then the Statement Turned

The same day, Karch posted a separate reflection to LinkedIn that reads, for a stretch, like actual growth. He writes about resolving conflicts directly with the person involved instead of through public statements, and says that if you cross a line with someone, you own it with them directly. Then, without naming him, he takes a shot at Portal and Half-Life writer Chet Faliszek, who'd published a 26-minute video days earlier picking apart Karch's original comments, calling him "an unsuccessful writer" and accusing him of making personal remarks about his physical anatomy and encouraging people to accost him. Faliszek's video isn't especially restrained either, and it goes after Karch personally too, but Karch is the one who just spent a paragraph explaining that public statements don't resolve anything before reaching for one again.

The One Real Fix

Buried under the back-and-forth is the part that should have led all of this from the start. Saber added an AI disclosure to Rideshare "Stimulator's" Steam page, the same disclosure that was missing through two earlier statements insisting there was nothing to worry about, with Karch's own line on it being that AI can and should help shape player experiences. Whatever anyone makes of that sentence, the store page now says what's actually in the game.

What I Take From This

None of it changes the complaint at the center of the story, which is that an employee said she was replaced by a chatbot, the company took days to even confirm AI was involved at all, and whether her account of being pushed off the project is exactly right still isn't fully settled. Sacco handled her apology with more grace than most people would manage in her position. Karch used his own apology as the launchpad for a second fight in the same breath, and that says more about how this company operates than either statement about AI does.