Logan Decker, the Editor-in-Chief at PC Gamer, has issued his own statement addressing the recent controversy surrounding some remarks made by Richard Garriott in an interview with that publication. It’s not an apology, nor is it an attempt to walk back the interview or the contents thereof. It’s…well, here’s a snippet:

When [Garriott] says that “Behind the inaccurate inflammatory headlines extracted from a longer dialog…” he’s clearly referring to a number of news sources that chose to repeat his provocative statement, but failed to take the time to fully examine and independently interpret the whole story, or even follow up on their own with Garriott to ask what he was getting at rather than just blurting out the most provocative thing they could. That’s tacky.

PC Gamer does not publish “gotcha” headlines. They’re gross. I was present for much of the interview, as was David Swofford, Director of Communications of Garriott’s Portalarium development studio. The majority of the discussion followed from Garriott’s assertion that “…other than a few exceptions, like Chris Roberts, I’ve met virtually no one in our industry who I think is close to as good a game designer as I am. I’m not saying that because I think I’m so brilliant. I think most game designers really just suck, and I think there’s a reason why.”

He went on to explain that he believes the dearth of good designers is a systemic problem, not a matter of a lack of individual talent: “We’re leaning on a lot of designers who get that job because they’re not qualified for the other jobs, rather than that they are really strongly qualified as a designer.”

…

…Sometimes when something unpleasant happens it’s best just to move on as quickly as possible – especially considering the unseemly inclination some folks have to sensationalize intemperate remarks and stir up resentment.

That’s not our style. It’s not the kind of traffic we’re after, and the people who gravitate towards that kind of thing are not really the audience we want to cultivate. The interview we published offered insight into game development by the one man most responsible for drawing me towards a career in the videogame industry, for which I’m grateful. It’s unfortunate that our interview led to some nasty remarks and high-octane snark that spread, flu-like, over Twitter, but we can’t control how our stories are covered and discussed after they’re published.

While the claim that PC Gamer doesn’t engage in the publication of “gotcha” headlines is debatable, the remainder of what Decker says is true. And really, PC Gamer themselves weren’t the principal offenders in the whole ugly mess; it was the plethora of other publications that rushed out articles with rather more flagrant re-arrangements of Garriott’s words that caused much of the problem.

And it’s about as close to a “sorry about the mess” as PC Gamer is likely to offer.