Hope officially died today, Monday, November 24 when Bonnie Ross penned a blog post that fell just short of encouraging: there will be “tweaks” in the “coming weeks” that will “improve” things. The word count was somewhere around 460, but eight would have sufficed: fear not, the deck chairs will be rearranged.

You're completely right to take the leadership at 343 and Microsoft to task for over-promising and under-delivering. But you are totally, completely wrong to throw the working stiffs at 343 and other studios under the bus and imply that they are total incompetents at their jobs.

343, per the industry norm, is made up largely of contract employees. These are salaried folks who have no long-term career prospects at 343; they know that their employment is ending after the project is finished, on 12/31/14 or 12/31/15. But these rank-and-file programers aren't lazy, despite what you say. They aren't taking the weekend off. They're working 70+ hours/week to fix this mess that their bosses forced on them. They're working weekends, they're working evenings, and in most cases they are not getting paid overtime. They're working those hours to keep a good reference and get a good recommendation for their next gig. In an industry like this with a "small town" feel, you can't have your last employer say you flaked during crunch.

Their bosses gave them too few resources and too little time to make this title work on launch day. Now they're busting their asses to get it fixed, and you say that they're taking it easy? You say that they are just going through the motions of rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic? These workers have more in common with the people below decks than they do with the ones grabbing lifeboats.

Please be more thoughtful in the future and direct your righteous anger at the people who deserve it. No matter how crappy it must be to wait 20 minutes for a Slayer match, I guarantee the rank-and-file at 343 are having a much, much worse November than you.