BoardGameGeek Just Fired a 20-Year Employee for Citing Demonic Possession as Grounds to Reject an Ad

BoardGameGeek fired its advertising manager of nearly 20 years today after an email exchange with a game publisher went viral on Reddit. The story broke this morning and is the most discussed item in the tabletop community right now.

Falling Whale Games submitted an ad campaign to BGG on May 7 for their Gamefound crowdfunding project Possess Me, Satan, a social deduction game for five to sixteen players in which one participant is secretly possessed by the ghost of a murderer. The premise is standard social deduction territory with hidden roles, ghost hunting, group accusation, and a horror theme and a provocative title.

After hearing nothing for over a week, Falling Whale followed up on May 15. What came back was not a standard rejection. Advertising manager Chad Krizan wrote that he could not “in good conscience” approve the ads, explaining that his personal firsthand experiences with demonic possession made the subject matter impossible for him to promote. He wrote, in part, that he had seen Jesus heal people from severe occultic abuse, that the theme of the game depicted a terrible reality, and that he would urge the developers to consider pulling the entire project.

Falling Whale published the email exchange. Within six hours, BGG founder Scott Alden posted on the forums: “Due to a situation in which BGG’s Advertising Manager responded inappropriately in a business email to a designer, I have decided to let him go.”

The story has predictably split the tabletop community. Critics of Krizan call the email unprofessional, intrusive, and a misuse of a business correspondence channel to evangelize a client. His defenders point out that a man with two decades of service to the hobby was fired within six hours of a Reddit post because he expressed a sincere religious conviction in a private email and declined a campaign on personal grounds.

Both of those things can be true simultaneously, and the speed of Krizan’s firing says something worth noting because of the way Board Game Geek has traditionally caused problems for Christians and conservatives. A man who spent twenty years building advertising relationships for the largest board game database in the world was terminated in less than a business day because his email went viral on Reddit. BGG did not investigate, consult legal counsel on a measured response, or issue a warning. The mob moved fast and BGG moved faster.

Possess Me, Satan has raised just over $14,000 from approximately 250 backers on Gamefound and has 30 days remaining in its campaign. The controversy has almost certainly helped its numbers.

This is not a surprise from BoardGameGeek. The platform has spent years banning users for expressing right-of-center or Christian viewpoints in forum discussions, while its moderation culture reflects the progressive consensus of its staff without apology. A user on BGG who questions gender ideology in a game’s promotional materials gets banned. A user who expresses concern about occult themes in hobby content gets banned. The pattern is documented and consistent. BGG does not treat religious conviction as a protected perspective deserving accommodation. It treats it as a problem to be managed.

Under US employment law, religious belief is a protected class. A company that terminates an employee for acting on sincere religious conviction faces real legal exposure. Krizan’s email was unprofessional. Whether it constituted terminable conduct under employment law, or whether BGG simply moved fast because the social media pressure was loud, is a question his attorneys are probably already asking.

The hobby community that lectures the industry about inclusion and treating people with dignity had a Christian man’s twenty-year career ended before lunch. The game that triggered it will sell more copies by the end of the week than it would have without the controversy.

What does it say about BoardGameGeek’s stated values that a twenty-year employee’s career ended in six hours because he expressed a sincere religious belief? Let us know in the comments.

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