i like how many people think twitter is some vacuum where you can just spew any inane supposedly private thoughts you have. maybe it feels like some weird grey area that people don't think pertains to their professional life in the slightest, but i think more and more it's turning out to not be that way.

btw wrote this while on the can #ericpoop

Was it mabye some kind of failed morbid but cute Halloween joke from him? As I've seen from other people on twitter around these parts of the year.

I am kind of half with you. Yes, he probably did not mean that he was actually going to kill Gabe, but if I start working for a company, or am providing a product for a company to sell and they mess up a press release or something in a very minor way, and I say on twitter I am going to kill the CEO of that company... Joking or not, it's way too unprofessional and I would not expect them to keep me on board.

this

Having your game marked as Early Access is bad for business. Being an asshole and having your game removed from Steam is even worse for business.

Of course Valve is coming down hard on him to make an example, but it's an example that needs to be made. Making games is a business. It seems some of these devs don't understand that. You could have a ton of great ideas, but that means nothing if you're going to bite the hand that feeds you.

All he needed to do was make a phone call or send an email and it likely would have been resolved immediately. He didn't want to be professional about it, and he got what he deserved.

Has it come to this? Do people really exist that cannot stop and think for a second before hitting a 'post' button in the same manner someone would involuntarily blurt out something vocally out of anger?

A good rule of thumb is to stop and read what you just wrote and think about how it would be received by the rest of the world before sending it out, but maybe that's just me.

Also, as petty and knee-jerk as it is, Valve is perfectly within its rights to refuse service to this individual who perhaps may not be the most professional of clients.

@jesus_phish: That's rough. Well hopefully he can negotiate some sort of apology with valve or something, this has got to suck for anyone who helped make thiis.

Well the reality is that some people under a lot of pressure can crack and make mistakes by flying off the handle. It's always easy to judge people when you aren't in their situation.

This could boil down to a gun control argument, but I really don't want to get into that.

Basically humans aren't perfect, we all have different coping measures we have learnt in life - often from those we grew up around and they aren't always the most constructive. Throw some common modern issues like depression in the mix and it's not suprising things like this come about - "mental immaturity" or not.

It's actually the secretly insidious thing about social networking in general. We're given the illusion of participating in a walled garden, when, in reality, they're doing whatever they can to expose us.

I wish I hadn't read this article. It just serves to reminds of us of how socially inept people have grown to become.

@crystaljdesign: I think he shoulda just been thankful that Valve were promoting his game at all. How many other developers wish they could get a slot in the promo on the front page. Heck, I bet some of them would say they'd "kill for a banner ad on steam". He behaved like a spoiled kid being brought an xbox one for christmas and then crying because he asked Santa for a PS4 when what he should have done is been grateful but took it back to the shop and exchanged it for the right one - Or you know, wrote valve an e-mail thanking them for the promo but asking them to correct it.

Very sad situation, steam was screwing over this guy for quite some time, first not allowing the game on to steam despite having a publisher that had published other games for absolutely no reason and despite the game actually being really good and with no explanation at all, he surely would have been frustrated with steam long before the early access banner and angry response. Of course he shouldn't have said what he said but I always try to think about motivations and intentions more than the actual words people come out with. Unlike other highly publicized recent events, this guy obviously did not mean to scare anyone or inflict any harm, he obviously got so frustrated and didn't know how to deal with his emotions and the result is a lot of financial harm to him, a damaged reputation and the loss of a really good game from Steam. Hard to feel anything but sorry for him.

Despite what Patrick saying about Valve being a company of humans and not robots being true, the fact is there's been absolutely no sign that that is the case for some time. Everything is automated, you don't get to speak to anyone. Even as a dev with a game on steam making money for valce, I doubt he had the option of conversing with anyone at steam; he would have had the option to fill out an online form and maybe get a response, maybe a week or two later, probably from a customer service rep who doesn't care.

Not to say it was wrong of steam to take the game down in this situation. I hope he realizes his mistakes, gets the chance to apologize, and the game gets back on steam.

surely the videogame equivalent would be a Spore Award?

As for the comment, It was dumb and he really shouldn't have done it. I'm sure the game will be back up on steam at some point.

Whether or not you think he was serious about possibly killing a man, I am glad there were finally some real-world consequences toward someone for making the threat far too lightly over social media. Hopefully this is the first of many similar situations that help to eliminate this type of terrible behavior. Text does not convey the necessary tone needed for careless, free-form speech such as when you're conversing with a handful of people and can say "I'm going to kill them!" with sufficient inflection to diffuse what the direct interpretation would be.

@jaxboy: That certainly doesn't help but I'd imagine it's Murderbeck because of Halloween. I imagine he did that for fun and now it's quite...would ironic be the right word?

This guy has been a douche to paying customers to, so this is a good thing.

Talk bad about Gabe on twitter, game removed from Steam. Valve is like a child.

No not really. Rethia is correct, this guy was blowing hot air and clearly pissed off, no one in their right minds thinks that was a legitimate death threat. 12 angry men is a movie about how logic and common sense should be used to judge a person, not taking every single thing they say deadly seriously and letting one brief circumstance and one moment in time determine a persons life and find them guilty of something they aren't.

In todays world of nonsense social media and internet thuggery it should be required viewing.

It astonishes me that people continue to be so incredibly stupid and post stuff like this on twitter lol, what a moron...

Well, I think the dev now knows posting a death threat to Gabe Newell wasn't a smart thing to do.

It's not free advertising, it has the opposite effect of an ad (for me personally). I thought the game looked neat and probably would have checked it out. I'm not going to bother now. *Edit* Turns out I already have the game. I must have got it in a Humble Bundle or something. I've never installed it.

Feel bad for his partner. Valve screwed up and its ok to be mad, but it is reckless to let an outburst threaten people and reflect badly on others involved.

https://twitter.com/Vallisca3x3x3/status/524576042166800384

People are just crazy anymore.

It's a shame because it's a pretty fun game.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperbole

"Hyperbole is the use of exaggeration as a rhetorical device or figure of speech. It may be used to evoke strong feelings or to create a strong impression, but is not meant to be taken literally."

I'd imagine the 'Steam is the most incompetent piece of fucking shit' comment was really what done for him here. I can imagine Gabe / Valve taking that way more seriously than a poorly judged 'joke' about killing Gabe.

@karkarov: so it was like all those threats from last week? No one on Twitter means to kill anyone or harm anyone because they said it in a fit, such as "blowing hot air and clearly pissed off"? I dont think any gamers in their right mind would threaten, target, assault, or rape the "prominent female developers" from last week. Valve should apologize and fire Gabe for being so quick to react. Something like that?

Hot pro tip: Don't threaten people who have the power to make you lose a lot of money.

Come on guys, it doesn't matter if the threat was hyperbole or not, and you know that. You don't insult and threaten a business partner unless you no longer want to maintain a professional relationship. He was out of line and his game was pulled, that's a reasonable response.

Edit: The game has now been pulled from the Humble Store too according to the other dev.

I can't stop laughing at this story. The man Phil Phished it all the way out of the games industry AS HIS GAME WAS RELEASED for a problem that has happened to multiple developers games recently (showing games not in Early Access being labeled as such) but those were fixed in under an hour by a calm email to Steam. People need to calm down its just video games.

I think his fuse was already a little short in respect to Valve. You might remember Paranautical Activity as the game that Adult Swim wanted to publish and get on Steam right away last year but Valve allegedly put the kibosh on it because PN already had a Greenlight page and Valve didn't want to give the impression that you could do an end around Greenlight with a publisher. He's been bumping heads with Valave since the start of their relationship.

That said it's not an excuse, dude is an idiot for sure.

Also he has just announced he is leaving Paranautical Activity developer Code Avarice on a post on their site about 10 minutes ago.

Death threats aren't okay--ever.

Bold words

Instead of going to Twitter and saying stupid stuff, he could have contacted Valve, in private, and said "hey, our game is actually not in Early Access anymore. There is a problem on your storefront, could you fix it?" But instead he has to do something incredibly stupid and has most likely trashed his reputation within the gaming community.

I feel bad for the other developer he worked with. What an incredibly childish way to respond to what was obviously a mistake that could be fixed.

Someone needs to coin a catchy new term for professional suicide by Twitter. Perhaps in honor of Mr.Maulbeck we could go with "Murderbeck" as in "He really pulled a Murderbeck.", or "He Murderbecked his way into the unemployment line."

This guy takes overreacting to a whole new level. I can sympathize with his frustration but at some point you've gotta have a filter that says "I've said all that I need to say". Somewhere along the line this guy left his filter behind and never looked back. He may have to look long and hard to find it now... he's going to need it if he wants to stay in this field.

In a similar recent case, a certain series of blogs masquerading as news websites, ran an article of a female author who tracked down and stalked (in person), attacked somebody who gave her book a bad review. One of their blogs praised the woman for exacting justice. Another blog on the site, one that's focusing on women's rights and lives brought up how fucking stupid she is for committing a series of serious crimes and assault under the guise of "LOOK AT ME, I AM THE VICTIM HERE".

I am happy that it's 99% "that's freaking stupid" over here about this deal. How did he not deal with it the right way and contact them about their error? That could have led to a little extra assistance as an excuse from them, maybe some extra deals!

(No, Phil Fish deserves an award for posting on 4chan as totally somebody else and failing to mask out the "delete tweet" etc detail in his attached Twitter screenshot. Everybody going to those lengths do. Mental health issues, temporary or undiagnosed, all need checkups. If you ever look back a very short time in life and wonder why you said this, why you did that, or if you feel that you may be under the weather too long and hard to be good for you, get tests. Even if you need to munch happypills life will get better, not to mention easier, and you will become a human being that people will want to interact with instead of just throw stuff at.)

Honestly ... no matter if he just was blowing hot air or not ... we need to start seeing people getting punished for stuff like this. I don't care if it was just a joke gone wrong or an angry moment, you just don't do something like this and should be prepared for the consequences. As far as I understand he didn't even try to apologize yet.

This guy was banning people from his steam forums group for giving the game bad reviews, reviewed it himself without disclosing he was the dev, and is partially responsible for opening the greenlight floodgates that loaded steam with shovelware

Maybe now is a bad time to email their company about getting my download code back.

'But having your game on Steam is a courtesy, not a right, and Valve is a company made of people, not robots'

Can't really say it any better then that. Too many developers think, they have the right to be on Steam. Hey dipshit, no you don't. You know what happens when I tell my emplyer I wanna fucking kill him and he's going to die? Yeah, I lose my job. It's commen sense.

This guy is a nutjob.

It's an interesting point about the ensuing publicity. For a big game this would be suicide, but for an unknown indie 5 minutes in the spotlight can make all the difference. Does it matter that it's 'bad publicity'? Perhaps not - I've still heard of his game 100% more than I otherwise would have.

Regardless about how you feel about Steam or its business practices, it is still technically the world that allows you to make money. Someone made a clerical error. Get a hold of them to fix it. If my employer spelled my name wrong and I wasn't getting some sort of credit, I wouldn't go on twitter, call them a bunch of names, and the threaten to kill the CEO.

Woah. When you type it out yourself, you realize how insane it actually it is.

Why dude, why?

@patrickklepek Mike issued a statement. He's quitting code avarice and sold his shares of the company.: http://codeavarice.com/post/100592709238/mike-is-leaving-code-avarice

Update?

Anyways, dude is probably not in a good place and everyone is calling him an idiot. I feel like someone should reach out.

Lesson: learn when to shut your mouth even if you don't like it.