In the summer of 2020, two videogame companies canceled sponsorship deals with Saudi Arabia’s planned city-state of Neom following fan complaints about the country’s human-rights record. Neom Chief Executive Nadhmi al-Nasr called an emergency meeting on a weekend and asked his communications team why it hadn’t warned him this might happen.
“If you don’t tell me who is responsible,” Mr. Nasr said, according to people with direct knowledge of the meeting, “I’m going to take a gun from under my desk and shoot you.”
