Well, a CEO apologized, unexpectedly.
Stella Sacco the former writer of Saber revealed that Matt Karch apologized for his actions.
"He apologized unreservedly for the awful way he spoke about me in the press," she wrote on Bluesky. "The email's full text will stay between us; I'm not that kind of girl. But I have confirmed it was from him."
She said she accepted it. That should have closed a week, but it was not the case.
What he was apologising for
Karch's statement to This Week in Video Games was the start of all of it. He opened with "Stella who? I had to ask Claude because I have never spoken to her or seen her." Karch accused Sacco of violating a confidentiality clause in her agreement. He stated she'd been replaced by "someone more talented," and added that he would "frankly in retrospect have been happy to replace her with AI" because AI is "programmed to be honest."
Sacco's response was more of a this tainted her future employment. "The truth is, bad treatment is everywhere in games," she wrote. "I'm just more willing than others to call it out. And I call it out so maybe others will be willing, too, when it happens to them."
She also stated that she was abused a lot, stating she wasn't especially troubled by slurs from anonymous commenters, but that having 20 years of job reputation attacked by someone with institutional power was different.
According to her, Karch wants to make things right. Sacco says she doesn't yet know what that would look like and needs some time. "Apologies are simply in too short a supply these days to spurn one when it's offered."
What the apology doesn't settle
Sacco stated that she was honest and "I think we can all now agree that's been borne out."
An apology for how someone spoke is a separate thing from a confession, and Karch's apology, by her own account, is for the words he shared with the press rather than the AI claim.
Her position on AI hasn't changed. "Matt and I obviously differ on this, and as a CEO the consequences of its use fall on him, and unfortunately also on his employees."
Then he posted again
Karch spoke on his own LinkedIn the same day, without naming Sacco, mostly about the hazards of responding to a perceived personal insult with a public statement. He stated that he should have said nothing and left it to his communications team.
At the same time, he took a shot at Portal writer Chet Faliszek, who had made a video on the This Week in Video Games statement was an avoidable PR disaster. Karch called him an unsuccessful writer and included just enough details to point everyone toward a video that had been sitting at around 4,000 views.
Sacco closed her post with "God willing, this is the last statement I'll need to make about this."
The Steam page still carries no AI disclosure. Karch stated one will go up once the feature set is finalised.
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