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Monday, December 6, 2021

PlayStation Network Sr. Vice President George Cacioppo fired for alleged pedophilia

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - This whole story is upsetting, as is the need for groups like this.

I have noticed it's becoming fairly common for people to accuse their enemies of being a pedophile, sort of like how it's common to accuse your political opponents of being Russian assets. I've tended to treat those claims with equal veracity... which is to say, I believe it's a made-up obsession, focusing on getting people upset over very bold claims. (No one wants their children preyed on... and almost no one wants their country's voting system in the hands of a foreign power.)

Well, there are (mostly) faked reports about people being on the dole from the Russian government, and there are... some more credible-looking reports of people being pedophiles who want to solicit sex or sexual relations with minors. (Catching predators is apparently a whole GENRE of video content that you can binge-watch.) Of course, everyone is innocent until proven guilty (which is why I'll keep spamming forms of the word “allege” in this article), but it is a fact that the alleged subject of this video, who is allegedly George Cacioppo, got fired from Sony. He was formerly a Senior Vice President of Engineering of PlayStation Network since 2013 according to his (alleged) LinkedIn profile, which notably has many less connections on the live version (actually, within the couple of hours I spent researching and writing this article, it's been deleted entirely!) than the archived version.




In a statement made to CNET from Sony, they have said “[w]e are aware of the situation and the employee in question has been terminated from employment.” It seems like Sony has cut through the mountains of allegations and made a decision already.

Of course, the video doesn't prove anything (besides the fact that the subject in question has a PlayStation 5 shirt), but there are follow-up chat logs posted by the People v. Preds group. (Content warning: they are disgusting in nature.) In that conversation, the person who is allegedly George Cacioppo asked how old the person he met on Grindr (and later discussed on text message) was. The person said 15 years old... and then talked about... things I don't want to repeat here. And there were inappropriate, lewd images sent. (The logs don't actually show them. Which is good. For my eyes.)

Alleged George Cacioppo man PlayStation 5 shirt pedophile child predator
This is a photo of the guy from the video, who is portrayed as George Cacioppo, former Senior VP of Sony.
...Though it could be all a misunderstanding.


The person who initiated the conversation then asked what the seemingly 15 year old boy wanted to do, and that turned to him suggesting a sexual interaction... and that turned into the allegedly George Cacioppo (though he referred to himself as Jeff) providing his location and asking the 15 year old to Uber to his place. ...Yeaaaaaaaaah. So that's how the above video happened. Or so they claim.

George Cacioppo no longer has a job at Sony. There's allegations from social media commenters that some PlayStation fans are acting victimised (I've seen someone who is obviously a hacked bot do that, but not real people) and under attack, and other allegations that the media is covering up the story (I've seen several mainstream media outlets cover this, from Kotaku to GameSpot to Polygon to Game Developer to...). Since I don't want KoopaTV to be accused of covering anything up, I'm writing this article. Though it makes me... obviously uncomfortable, given the subject matter.

As a matter of how this reflects on Sony, I don't think this guy reflects that whole company or PlayStation. There's no evidence that there's some kind of greater ring of pedophiles working within PlayStation and George Cacioppo was allegedly just one part of it, and they sure got rid of him rather quickly. ...But feel free to try to convince me otherwise. I'm open to it. It would fit how Sony has the worst response to hearing about Activision Blizzard's harassment stories. Though I'm sure George Cacioppo wasn't part of the team that made that response.

Anyway, People v. Preds sent over the information about the guy they communicated with over to law enforcement. Maybe something will come of it, though I personally don't have much faith in that process. Hopefully, this so-called Jeff character didn't meet up with actual minors with devious intentions before this sting happened, and hopefully he won't do so in the future.



KoopaTV doesn't plan to make “publishing about (alleged) pedophiles in the videogame industry” a regular feature. ...He doesn't doubt there are more than zero of them in the industry, but he'd rather discuss other things. In any case, make sure your children are safe, and if you find yourself talking to minors, please don't discuss or desire sex with them. Maybe talk about more pleasant, age-appropriate topics? KoopaTV usually writes about those.

7 comments :

  1. Since the victim is male I guess there won't be so many skeptics about the allegations now.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Wot's that supposed to mean? >_>

      Technically, there's no actual victim. I mean, there theoretically could've been if it was a real minor. But there's no one that actually got victimised here.

      Delete
  2. Hope it’s not true, but wouldn’t surprise me anyway. Ever notice how MOST of the developers can do no wrong, but the executives of all these game companies seem to be the devils incarnate?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I've been trying to think of how to reply to this for a while and I don't get it.

      Delete
    2. The people actually programming the games are fine, but the PR department/bigwigs really aren’t good people. I often wonder if people like Doug Bowser, obviously not comparing him to this guy, even really care about games or are just in it for the money. You can do both, but I think eventually you need up picking one side.

      Delete
    3. Programmers can absolutely turn out to be pedophiles too...!

      Delete

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