I find it fascinating that one of his co-workers is standing up for him.

This guy has a history of rudeness and Twitter rages, has just blew up your largest revenue stream for your game and you want him back?

By all means forgive the man, continue to be his friend, look out for him, grab a drink, whatever. That's fine. But from a business perspective, that's not a man you continue working with. Period.

Yeah, they're being assholes in response to someone they don't know being an asshole to someone with a lot of power.

Have some courtesy people. It's even happening in this thread quite a bit. Gross behavior reinforces gross behavior.

What a numptee.

@chilibean_3: the same can be said about communism. People can not be trusted with power.

I'm happy to let you know that some people in this world value other perspectives over the business perspective. They're the people that everyone should aspire to be.

I still think it's an overreaction to call incidents like these "death threats".

I definitely understand why his comments were unacceptable, and caused the game to be removed, but, really... While it may fit the exact technical definition of a "death threat", it's pretty silly to imply that it's a credible danger to anyone.

I think people who, for instance, look up your address and make really specific comments to the extent that has previously been seen -- they should have a law enforcement problem. But even these people aren't going to actually hurt anyone.

Much less people who were just agitated, using hyperbole, and saying dumb things they shouldn't. Gabe is safe.

It's the internet. Just because it shouldn't be common or allowed to make inappropriate comments to this end, doesn't mean anyone's actually in danger.

All press is good press.

As a short tempered hothead I have a mote of sympathy for this guy. It was monolithically boneheaded and Valve's response is fair, but on a human level it's hard not to feel for him. Let he who has not run his mouth like an asshole during a peak of stress cast the first stone.

While I in no way feel Valve acted too harshly, I still can't help but sympathize, at least with the developers frustrations if not his (in my opinion rash) actions. Developers are people too, and many of them have their fair share of issues, just like the rest of us, and sometimes they snap, just like the rest of us. I've been there, sometimes it all just gets too much, I don't blame the guy for walking away, hopefully he can find something less stressful. I say that with not a single hint of sarcasm, really, making indie games is one of the most stressful jobs you can imagine right now and it's no wonder we're seeing developers pop one after the other like this.

@bigd145: He was forced to sell his part in the company and royalties from his own game. He's blackballed and soon to be broke.

I don't think anyone is saying dude should be prosecuted, are they? He went off all half cocked on a business partner. In full view of the public. I don't blame Valve for not wanting to continue their business relationship with him or the company he represents at all. Even without the death threat I'd have a hard time describing the preceding tweets from him about the whole situation as "professional".

It's also worth noting that Valve didn't publically sever ties, they contacted him privately and he chose to share the email.

Paranautical Activity is a decent game, though it has been in early access for like 3 years so I'm not sure who would have bought it outside of a steam sale. Twitter for public figures = ritual suicide.

@jondo: That doesn't also excuse people from making them. I'm 100% sure that Gabe never actually thought he was in danger but does that mean he should just brush it off and accept a world where people can threaten your life, empty or not, without repercussion? Absolutely not. Empty threats, even if you know they are empty, should always be treated as legitimate otherwise these things will continue until someone treats a real threat as empty and pays the price. Threatening a persons life should ALWAYS be treated as a legitimate threat and is never, ever acceptable.

The fact that this fellow actually stood up and said "yeah, okay, I TOTALLY fucked up" is kind of touching. It shouldn't be, but we live on the internet where the general rule of thumb seems to be to never back down from anything. Ever. Under any circumstances.

So yeah, good on him for learning and being a decent human being about it. But unfortunately, this puts the ball in Valve's court, and Valve obviously doesn't want to be seen as keeping this game off out of spite, or taking it back under the terms of "if any of your employees does this you must fire them." It's kind of a weird and fascinating (albeit small-scale) PR dilemma for them.

@spraynardtatum: I'd much rather drink in the schadenfreude.

Another angry indie developer takes his frustration out on twitter and it ends horribly for him, hopefully Valve will reconsider for the other members who also put in the development effort.

This is like Amazon pulling the complete series of Even Stevens from their shelves because Shia Labeouf yelled at Jeff Bezos.

@sterling: I noticed that too. That is absolutely disgusting.

When are people going to learn that this is not okay, it's not funny, you look like an idiot. A sad, pathetic idiot...

@civid: The retort to it was that later on, when jury 3 (Lee J. Cobb) gets angry at him and start screaming "I am going to kill you", he replies "You don't really mean you'll kill me, do you?"... the point being anyone can have an outburst and, while not excusable, it helps no one to be overly literal of those moments without context.

Still, it seems he just learned to handle the consequences of his actions. I just wish Steam reviews his decision now, for the sake of the other people that worked on the project.

Have at it. It's going to help you develop as a person.

Steam is a private service run by Valve, and they can of course do anything they want within the limit of the contract they sign with developers. However, it does seem shitty to this company to straight up kill the game because of this. Still, what an insanely dumb thing to say and do, like do you have any filter on your thoughts before they hit the internet?

At least he was rational enough to realize that HIS OWN temper and lack of self control was the real issue. People who blame everyone elses vitriol for their own vitriol are ridiculous in my opinion. Yeah, its easy to fly off the handle on the internet, but its a cycle that can be broken by walking away, cooling down and getting back to an even keel.

@sterling: You don't necessarily favourite things that you agree with, but it's an easy way to save ridiculous tweets. I do it all the time.

I think that only applies if people can still buy the thing you made.

My personal feelings on the situation.

A lot of actions that have happened in the past few weeks can be described in 12 Angry Men

Talk about a stupid fucking mistake! I mean yeah I get mad at my wife or my boss for things but I dont post some stupid ass death threat on twitter. I know if i was the other guys who worked on that game and saw that my chance to make some money went up in smoke because dip shit's twitter rant... I think a beat down in the parking lot is in that asshole's future!

Public figures really need to learn that internet anonymity only applies to anonymous users. Your words actually have consequences when you tie your name and job/livelihood to your internet soapbox. This is possibly the stupidest thing I have ever seen come from a game dev. Phil Fish is going to have to work to earn back that title.

There is a difference between screaming into your house/apartment when you are angry and spouting nonsense because of it and having a semi-permanent place everyone can read your immediate anger and thus you have twitter. I'm sure a lot of us have been angry at some point in time (we are all gamers and some stuff in games can get you to scream at the top of your lungs when you fail), but you just don't do this sort of stuff. Phil Fish would have been "the brilliant mastermind behind FEZ" instead of the screaming crazy person people believe him to be if he'd never used twitter. IF anything, stuff like twitter and our odd immediate need for instant information has kind of devalued the act of getting the information, and devalued the information itself because people care less about if it's 'right' as long as it's 'right now'. In general I still don't get why people who have trouble saying the right thing keep using it. Some only stop after they say something seriously questionable (see C-Lo Green).

Yes I'm sure there's a lot of truly harmless and some useful stuff on Twitter, but I wonder how much of it is vital.

it's good of him to own it in the end, but you don't shit where you eat. he was in a business relationship with valve, had a legitimate grievance- but instead of being professional, he had an outrageous (and frankly inexcusable) outburst.

that'll get you fired most places- don't see why it's any different if it's over the interwebs. ESPECIALLY given it's in public (twitter).

I am sorry but making death threats even as a "joke" is not acceptable. Making death threats shouldnt really be acceptable in any context when it comes to real life (in my mind the same thing applies to rape jokes which i also find pretty horrifying).

Also as other people have said social media is not really the problem. It is just that some people seem to lack any kind of self control on what they type on the internet.

People should really think about what kind of traces of themselves they leave on the internet. For example most of my employers have checked my history on the Internet. Of course they wont find the stuff that I have done by using a username but anything related to my real name will come up.

Internet generally has a very long memory and it is very difficult to remove stuff from it. So it is always wise to think a bit before pushing that "post" button.

I can't help but think that this story and the reaction to it would be much different if Gabe Newell was a woman.

And yet no female game developers or journalists were involved in this! Funny how that works sometimes.

Yeah, but I do agree with the part about Steam being an incompetent piece of fucking shit. I have ... my reasons.

care to share them?

Cause my experience with them has been great.

These Indie developers seem such nice people.

DON'T DO ANYTHING WRONG ONLINE!

I too often use the word "shitty" in my statements... k maybe not.
I can understand his reasons for leaving his studio, but i also feel like he didn't try to resolve this situation sensibly, a better apology from the start and some renegotiating with Valve might have turned this around, but it feels like within a few hours he's thrown his dreams away, this publicity might have even benefited the rest of the studio through sales if they got the game back up on Steam.

If I do continue to work in games it’ll be as an anonymous 1 of 1000 at some shitty corporation, not the most public figure of a single digit sized team.

Dude still can't just keep his snark in check, even in an 'apology' letter. All the while yesterday he was shitting on Humble for not getting as many sales as he would've if they were still on Steam. The guy just doesn't know to get out of his own way.

@devildoll: well, slow downloads, slow support, limitations regarding password change and its effects on ability to sell or buy via com market, it being a drm, region segregation, prices in my region, hitherto it's been a terrible platform software wise, cheaters running rampant on most both Valve and other dev game servers. Tis but for starters.

Funny or not, these are not the only or main reasons.

But do not be mistaken, this is my stance on most DRMs.

that's an odd implication to make. both genders are equally disturbed (as in, emotionally- not 'troubled' as it were) by threats, are they not?

@tesla: not sure what gender has to do with anything here

I feel bad for his partners, there careers might be dead all because of this hot head

Everyday I question why Twitter still exists. What has it brought us besides knee jerk, death threat, temper tantrums.

I’m afraid we are going to see a lot more of these kinds of things happening since Steam is basically a monopoly. We desperatelly need a competition to force Steam not only to improve its service, but completely rework curation, because this is not the first case they are showing their power. THAT SAID, it was still enormously stupid from the developer to say something like this. At first, before seeing tweets, i thought its gonna be something like "i’m so mad, i could kill gabe now" in a way, you would say " i’m so angry that i want to punch someone right now". But seeing what he actually wrote makes me scratch my head.

Yeah, that's... an unfortunate way to speak about future employers.

Also, he kind of couldn't have picked a worse time to "sarcastically joke" about killing a game developer.

Yeah, there would be a lot of angry people saying how Valve and Gabe (Gabrielle?) were overreacting over a joke and that they should actullay really die over how stupid they were.