I personally find it somewhat difficult to respect somebody who has likely given us forged evidence (e.g. the correspondence ID thing), allegedly blocked people on Twitter for pointing out holes in the case, and fought with kids on Twitter who do not fully understand the situation. Not to mention his apparent past controversy and reputation for allegedly giving a video game that he worked on a low rating because he felt he wasn’t paid enough or something, brought up before on third-party forums if you search. Just in case, let us leave that thing at that. Good speculation and points by GeorgeTheDev:
Tommy seemingly failed to address that old game-rating/forum reputation stuff, yet he directly posted a comment on the online news article “Earthworm Jim: PR Stunt, Vanity Project, or Harmless Nostalgia?” which is about his gaming console and concerns regarding it. This is just what I’ve found at a glimpse from doing some research on Tommy, things could definitely be worse but this stuff is still strange to see.
Why has he been so public about this situation, making various tweets about it? Could he not have resolved it in private and simply made one or two basic tweets? They should just go to court if they can. Instead, Tommy has made this aspect of his work and finance totally public and got into little fights with young Roblox fans on Twitter. It baffles me; why handle professional (job sense) stuff of this nature in this way? That just isn’t professional (behavior sense) to me, those people he is interacting with are literally Twitter kids who don’t understand this stuff much and just want the sound to remain on Roblox or something.
I can’t see myself fully respecting somebody who could possibly partly be doing this for publicity, especially because he’s been greatly focused on that gaming console at the same time. The recent VentureBeat article “Tommy Tallarico is making a lot of noise about Intellivision” has Tommy telling the interviewer that he is considering the possibility of bringing Roblox to his console (which doesn’t seem like it could easily work on it, from what I’ve seen): all while publishing MS Paint-made legal documents onto Twitter. I can’t take one seriously when their situation is to that point.
Roblox claims in the OP that “Tommy has no copyright to the “oof” sound (and in response to our requests he has presented us no proof of ownership to it)” - I’m willing to believe Roblox here, as they could easily end up in a lot of legal trouble for lying, and I don’t see them being dishonest to the community anyways.
With all these things in mind, should one take Tommy seriously and be able to respect him? It is up to one, but logically, I can see why it would be hard to do so. These are my thoughts on the situation.
The situation sounds messy and I’m not sure what’s going on on either sides but I really hope the sound isn’t removed. I understand roblox want to phase out old stuff but there is a reason the sound has stayed for this long. It’s very, very iconic and I think it would be a mistake to remove it if something can be worked out. Ideally, create an option for avatars to use a custom death sound but keep current one as the default. All I know is Tommy doesn’t want it removed. Again it’s messy but I hope something can be worked out.Thanks for letting us know though.
It is great to see that Roblox is addressing this situation with diplomacy. Also, I read that Tommy has presented proof of ownership. Offering him a position within your team is an amazing way to get him some exposure. Great job, guys.
Possibly just as a friendly gesture. Or they want to show that they are still willing to try to work things out; Roblox indicates that they are still working on trying to come to a resolution, so they may have just decided to do this in the meantime. Perhaps Roblox may have some sort of plan or an idea of having Tommy join Roblox so that it can help/do something to help resolve this situation. Also, they go on to say this in the OP:
Maybe they are inviting him so that he can join and learn about/try out Roblox to see how it works, so that Tommy can come to understand Roblox and how it works. In the OP, Roblox sounds passionate about UGC and its future on this platform - they correlate it with Tommy and they use the discussion of him to transition into the discussion of UGC, so maybe they would like him to help out with UGC or to just see it as it happens since Roblox is excited about transitioning into this new era of emphasis on UGC on Roblox.
I really doubt Tommy’s up to playing ROBLOX. His attitude from his posts have been defaming ROBLOX. From what I’ve seen, he’s failed to present accurate copyright evidence and probably won’t be taking this to court. He knows that if he goes to court, he’ll lose, so he’s instead taking this public to bring more attention to his personal projects and defame ROBLOX enough to reach an out of court settlement. If he had anywhere close to a decent lawyer, he wouldn’t be taking this online on to Twitter. However, if this was nothing, ROBLOX wouldn’t be worried about it enough to make a public statement. ROBLOX must’ve done something wrong which they’re worried about, I just don’t think Tommy has the proof to prove it. Guess we’ll just have to wait and see what happens.
I don’t think Roblox was forced or required to make a statement, but rather they just chose to do so. Roblox even takes the liberty of claiming that “Tommy has no copyright to the ‘oof’ sound” and that he did not give Roblox any “proof of ownership to it.” The way they defend themselves sort of makes it seem like they feel they do not have much to worry about.
As you said, Tommy would probably lose if he goes to court anyway, and he probably will not take it to court in the first place; also he could just end up running out of the funds to keep the court case going while Roblox is a corporation with enough to deal with the case, so Roblox would theoretically be okay still. So yeah, that’s what I think about it; like you said, we shall wait and see what happens.
Obviously Roblox isn’t giving in, and has never had a plan to, so if he’s really going to sue he should do it already. The law can then decide who’s wrong and who’s right. Dragging this out like he’s doing is completely pointless, and if he doesn’t end up sueing then I’d say that speaks for itself.
True, ROBLOX may just be using this statement to deal with the negative publicity that Tommy brought in. It’s surprising how much damage a guy with 20k twitter followers can do to a massive corporation’s public view.
So all I have to do is defame Roblox and falsely claim to own some of their content and I’ll be offered a job? I’m not necessarily sure about who is correct, however, the situation seems quite bizarre nonetheless.
Something I keep seeing come up that I want to try and clear up (e.g. @True_jmdelacruz05’s post directly above) is that Roblox is removing the current death sound, however this was absolutely not confirmed by Roblox as far as I can tell, otherwise it would most likely be specified in the post. This is just a rumor spread by many of the YouTubers who are (tbh pretty poorly, keep in mind their goal is attention) covering this topic.
I don’t think Tommy wants to join ROBLOX’s staff team, since he seems to be pretty ticked at ROBLOX right now, judging by his tweets.
Even if he did join the team, I wouldn’t feel all that comfortable with someone being on the team that probably doesn’t like ROBLOX as a whole, now that apparentally ROBLOX and I quote, “stole” the iconic “OOF” sound.
This is definitely feels like a cash grab on Tommy’s part.
The only reason Roblox themselves are making an announcement on this is to uphold their reputation.
Either way, Tommy gets what he wants: Money
Either through Roblox, through publicity, or through both.
It would be cool to have him join our developer community though.
New year, new sounds! 
