Incident 119: Xsolla Employees Fired by CEO Allegedly via Big Data Analytics of Work Activities

Description: Xsolla CEO fired more than a hundred employees from his company in Perm, Russia, based on big data analysis of their remote digitized-work activity, which critics said was violating employee's privacy, outdated, and extremely ineffective.

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Alleged: unknown developed an AI system deployed by Xsolla, which harmed Xsolla employees.

Incident Stats

Incident ID
119
Report Count
4
Incident Date
2021-08-03
Editors
Sean McGregor, Khoa Lam
Xsolla fires 150 employees using big data and AI analysis, CEO’s letter causes controversy
gameworldobserver.com · 2021

Russian payment services company Xsolla has fired 150 employees at once. What caused controversy wasn’t the staff reduction itself but the CEO’s letter, in which he tried to explain the reason behind this decision.

The email written by Xsol…

Xsolla fires 150 employees based on big data analysis of their activity – “Many of you might be shocked, but I truly believe that Xsolla is not for you.”
mcvuk.com · 2021

Payment services company Xsolla has reportedly fired 150 of its employees, with workers in the company’s office in Perm, Russia being terminated based on big data analysis of their activity (via Game World Observer).

Making the situation wo…

Game payment company Xsolla fires 150 employees via controversial email
nme.com · 2021

150 people have been fired from Xsolla – a game payment company used by Steam, the Epic Games Store and other game developers – via a controversial email from CEO and founder Aleksandr Agapitov.

Agapitov contacted 150 fired employees throug…

Xsolla fires 150 employees following AI-based productivity audit
gamedaily.biz · 2021

The news raises a number of ethical questions that are especially pertinent in a pandemic-stricken working environment.

Xsolla, the Russia-based games industry payment solution provider, has reportedly laid off upwards of 150 employees foll…

Variants

A "variant" is an incident that shares the same causative factors, produces similar harms, and involves the same intelligent systems as a known AI incident. Rather than index variants as entirely separate incidents, we list variations of incidents under the first similar incident submitted to the database. Unlike other submission types to the incident database, variants are not required to have reporting in evidence external to the Incident Database. Learn more from the research paper.