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Indie developer, Mike Maulbeck, went on a little Twitter rant last night, which resulted in him claiming that he was going to “kill Gabe Newell”. Once the tweet spread around, Valve decided to pull his game, Paranautical Activity from Steam. After embarrassing himself on the Internet, Maulbeck has now resigned.
Maulbeck worked for the studio, Code Avarice, he has since sold his shares in the studio to a co-founder and will no longer be affiliated with the company. In a statement, Maulbeck explained his version of the events:
“Yesterday, Paranautical Activity released out of steam Early Access, and following some confusion about the state of the game I became frustrated with Steam, and tweeted a series of angry tweets that ended in me sarcastically saying I was going to kill Gabe Newell. A statement I obviously didn't mean but was regardless completely unacceptable.”
“As a result of my actions, Paranautical Activity, a game made by 4 or 5 people depending on who you count as team members, was removed from steam. I feel is it my responsibility to step down from Code Avarice completely so that Steam has no reason to harbor any more ill will towards the company, and maybe even if we can't see Paranautical Activity restored, at least future Code Avarice games may be allowed onto the platform.”
He then went on to say that he is “deeply sorry” for his short sighted actions, which resulted in his team's dreams and aspirations being destroyed. Maulbeck admits that he has a tendency to vent on Twitter, which he now realizes isn't the place for his rants.
Since he sold his shares, the former Code Avarice developer won't be compensated for future game sales, nor will he be consulted on future business decisions. These things combined may make it possible for the company to perform damage control and maybe get future titles on Steam.
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KitGuru Says: It is unlikely that Maulbeck was actually going to kill Gabe Newell. However that doesn't excuse the threat, sarcasm can be hard to to portray through social media and words definitely matter, even if the threat is empty. That said, these sorts of things haven't been taken so seriously in the past. For example, on Indie Game: The Movie, Phil Fish stated that he was going to “fucking murder that guy” when referring to his former business partner, whom he was having a legal dispute with. You can watch Phil Fish make his ‘threat' 1 hour and 4 minutes in to the movie.
If sarcastic death threats weren't accepted in society on some level, then situations like this wouldn't come up very often and people wouldn't be so casual about empty threats. Nobody called out Phil Fish when he ‘threatened' his former business partner on a documentary. I'm not saying it's right, I'm just saying, this seems to be a bit of a double standard, if we are to condemn death threats, then we can't let some people off the hook and theoretically force others out of their jobs for effectively doing the same thing.
well he messed up and paid the pen-ultimate price. I think the game should now be reinstated to steam as it wasn’t the rest of the company’s fault.
No one seems to be saying anything about the rather childish response from Gabe?
I mean someone insults you, you suck it up and maybe shout at them, but to “pull the game” is like, 2 kids fighting over a ball, “its my ball and you can’t have it”
Sad all around really.
I agree with the sentiments of the Game Dev though, steam is shit in some ways, they do not give refunds, even for totally broken games, ever. Such as Ghosts.
How is this childish from him? In any professional environment if you insult and especially if you threaten to kill the boss/company you are hoping to do business with it’s only natural for the company to not want to work with you. It’s well within their rights not to want to do business with anyone else especially when indie game developers are a dime a dozen. He should have been more respectful and aware of his position.
Thing is, what would happen if you went off on a rant against the MD of Multiplay?
Is a profesional enviroment, you have to be profesional and deal with it properly.
Steam is a monopoly. That means you do what they want – right or wrong, it doesn’t matter. And the cut they get is absurd – 30%, are you kidding me? An agent gets 10% and he actually has to work for his client, not just serve some bits online. And you can’t even get the game without Steam! That should be law, you have to have a non-DRM version directly from the author. Let’s then see these fake monopolies work for their cut.
You don’t know what a monopoly is do you? There are various other services like steam, that sell the same games as steam. Also developers aren’t forced to put their game on steam (look at minecraft it’s done amazing without steam, origin or any of the other services that are similar), so clearly there are more benefits to putting it on steam than trying to sell it without.
Yes, 70% market share isn’t a monopoly. You can target the rest of the 30% and hope pigs fly directly into your bank account.
So, i agree that the Dev was a moron, he shouldn’t have screamed like a child on twitter and threatened to kill someone over the status of the game, on the biggest platform on PC, to probably the most power single person in the whole PC game market. Gabe can literally make or break a game. I agree the dude was an idiot.
The childish thing is this, Gabe is literally saying “IMA TAKE YO GAME DOWN NOW COZ U SAY BAD THING TO ME” which is not exactly very professional (yes the dev was also not professional) but to take down the game because you have an issue with 1 of its devs, when there are other members of the development team that did not insult you is childish, it was not very professional behavior for either party but its unfair to punish A.) the other members of the team, and B.) Fucking over all the poeple who have already purchased the game on steam are probably now not getting access to updates and other things that come out related to the game they have paid money, people rely on steam.
Half-Life 3 confirmed?
If you walked in to a supermarket and issued a death threat to the staff, you’d get arrested and likely a lifetime ban from the store. This is no different. This guy was the lead dev on the game and was the one with the direct business relationship with Valve.
By issuing that threat he immediately invalidated any contracts he had with the firm and as such the game is removed from the system. How you fail to grasp one of the most fundamental basics of social interaction let alone business is utterly beyond me.