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Paranautical Activity pulled from Steam after dev threatens Gabe Newell

I love how the "insightful" sack of crap puts threat in quotes.

Oh. fuck. off. If you're going to badger on TB for his impressions on the validity of both the threat and the response to said threat given his statement was completely correct (that a) The right punishment was administrated and b) valve have a lot to answer for in regards to steam even if their hands are clean re: PA, which they are certainly not) then you're not seeing the forest for the one flaming tree that's surrounded by a moat of watter and will not cause anything else to catch on fire.

Edit: Much less calling him an " 'insightful' sack of crap".
 

My temper and tendency to use twitter to vent has been a consistent problem since I entered the games industry, and I just can’t do it. I don’t have the willpower necessary to be the “face” of a company. 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.

It's funny how he thinks that abstaining from making death threats is somehow an insane feat of self control.
 
Why do game devs especially seem to swear in public statements? It always immediately makes me think the person is an idiot.

"Shitty"

Maybe it's just cos I'm English but you wouldn't dream of doing that in most other professions.
 
Why do game devs especially seem to swear in public statements? It always immediately makes me think the person is an idiot.

"Shitty"

Maybe it's just cos I'm English but you wouldn't dream of doing that in most other professions.

Too many people think 'indie' is an excuse for zero professionalism.
 
Why do game devs especially seem to swear in public statements? It always immediately makes me think the person is an idiot.

"Shitty"

Maybe it's just cos I'm English but you wouldn't dream of doing that in most other professions.

Because a lot of indies show themselves to be arseholes who really need some form of basic PR filter.
 
Man, dont bite the hand that feeds. He couldve been reasonable, but at the end of the day he's using their service and they dont have to deal with death threats.

He excersized his free speech, and Valve returned with ending their partnership. Sure its harsh, but you really have to think things through before sending death threats.
 
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.

Why is this guy so bad at knowing how the internet works

Why does he keep writing things that will get him in trouble ATTACHED TO HIS REAL NAME AND WORK HISTORY

Edit: Also why does he hate hyphens
 
It's clear that this guy just does not fundamentally understand human interaction. He also seems to lack understanding that his words have consequences.

He's that joke about a guy who has already dug themselves deep but still insist on keeping on digging.

In a way, I feel terrible for him, because he's going to have a hell of a time finding a job in the industry. At the same time, I can't really feel bad for him, because he's literally taking every opportunity possible to make things worse for himself. Pretty much the only thing he could do now to really put the cherry on top is actually try to follow through on his threats.
 
That resignation sounds needlessly whiny.

He really should have had someone review it first.

Probably, but I get the feeling that he doesn't have anyone in his life who is capable of giving him the perspective necessary to both understand the amount of humility required to give a proper apology and the elocution required to execute on it.
 
Looks like it's been pulled from the Humble Store?

yep. ouch.

think how much it sucks for the devs on th egame who didn't say a word. christ.

but it could be salvagable for them. what they should do is reform under a new studio name, re-skin the game as something else that looks a bit different and is called something different, and try again, minus the guy who made the death threats.

oh -- and consider bringing on someone who specifically is going to specialize in PR and will do all the talking -- seriously. the guys on the current team are inarticulate, to put it mildly, and shouldn't be speaking anymore.
 
Dumb as hell, right up until the very end. This guy doesn't seem fit to work with anyone.
 
The sad thing about this is that Paranautical Activity is really a FUN game to play, and even if the developers don't know how to do "public relations", it's a shame if the game will not sell enough just because it's not on Steam anymore :(
 
Yeah you just can't act like this and expect companies not to do anything.

I think Valve acted perfectly reasonably. If something is your living or you are relying on the income, you better make sure you don't do anything to ruin it... like most adults who have to work in jobs across the world who might want to tell their boss to go away (in a rude way).

At the moment there is quite a few people on twitter who seem to think they can say just about anything and not have any recourse.. of course in the UK this is about to change.
 
Oh. fuck. off. If you're going to badger on TB for his impressions on the validity of both the threat and the response to said threat given his statement was completely correct (that a) The right punishment was administrated and b) valve have a lot to answer for in regards to steam even if their hands are clean re: PA, which they are certainly not) then you're not seeing the forest for the one flaming tree that's surrounded by a moat of watter and will not cause anything else to catch on fire.

Edit: Much less calling him an " 'insightful' sack of crap".

There's a time and a place to analyze Valve's shitty conduct towards indies and publishers. While commenting on Valve's response to death threats towards their CEO is not that time and it's tasteless to even bring it into the conversation. But I wouldn't expect anything less from TB.
 
Interesting development. I guess it is now up to Valve if they apply "joint enterprise" here*. In any case I can see the game being absent from the Steam store for a while.

The remainder of the team are best to leave it a week or so then write a letter to Valve asking to hear what their options are (practical things like if their ban is forever what were to happen if another publisher were to publish it, would they be allowed to do so and would this publisher have to greenlight it...if they were another indie and would consumers have to re-buy this new version).

*-In the sense that individuals working for a developer can be seen as a voice for the developer I guess it is a joint enterprise, which is why so many have social conduct rules.

...

The problem is that this developer didn't reach out to the proper channels, plain and simple. He could have easily picked up the phone or wrote an email to his Valve rep to resolve the issue. These people do exist - in fact, Valve has an entire department of them and they're really good at what they do and are super professional. Source:
I've met a few of them and have visited their offices.
They are Valve's liaisons to the developers. I think the developer here (incorrectly) assumed that "Valve's too big to listen to me" and took to Twitter with his rage.

...
It is a good response (for anyone who has not read it, please pingback to it). I honed on this bit as it was what I most ignorant on. It is reassuring to know the developers have better support than end consumers do (although consumers have are able to support themselves on smaller issues and perhaps the slowness of support here is to encourage that in a display of crowd intelligence).

He can always market it to PSN, XBL.
Those platforms are much more rigid than Steam though. Steam is praised about how easy it is to roll out patches while the opposite is said for those. I think we've thankfully moved past charging developers for patches though.

There has to be a reason why if you go onto the store front and search for it that you won't find it. I can assume they are trying to halt sales while they work out if existing keys still work (if they have any left).
 
wait, they actually had that feature? no way.

Yeah, they added a "read comment aloud" feature, that was based off of this XKCD comic.

listen_to_yourself.png


Details here
 
There's a time and a place to analyze Valve's shitty conduct towards indies and publishers. While commenting on Valve's response to death threats towards their CEO is not that time and it's tasteless to even bring it into the conversation. But I wouldn't expect anything less from TB.

Why not now? "Hey, this fire happened. Let's just scream at it instead of understanding why the fire happened." is a dumb idea.
 
Dumb as hell, right up until the very end. This guy doesn't seem fit to work with anyone.

Almost everyone involved from dev team seem to have zero tact. Even the other developer, if you scroll through his twitter posts, sounds like an immature d-bag. Seriously, its not difficult to be nice and polite. These guys won't make it far in life if they don't change their attitude.
 
After the initial debacle and seeing Mike's tweets in response, I hoped they could still get the game posted to Steam. After looking at Vallisca's tweets (particularly this one -- how can you support these sorts of actions?, I'm not so sure.

Nonetheless, they've made the right move by having Mike sell out his part in the company and handing over the reigns to the rest of the team. That half-assed apology isn't helping them, though. Someone else should've written that in the typical third-person PR fashion of "Mike has stepped down & his shares have been sold off," because it isn't sincere and isn't doing them any favors.
 
what does this mean

I think Valve has an unusual company culture, for better and worse. The more I thought about it, though, that unusualness could just as likely lead to them taking them back as it would lead to them sticking to their guns. I guess I recant.

THAT SAID, taking everything into account I still think it's unlikely this game ever shows up on Steam again. There's no incentive for them to put the guys back up -- The sales cut of a single indie game isn't going to be persuasive to them, and there's no PR pressure to bring them back. I just don't see it happening.
 

What nice people how could anyone not like them?

For what it's worth, people should probably read the whole conversation between those people for context.

The person he's responding too went out of his way to call the developer(not the one who threatened to kill Gabe. The developer who lost an essential revenue avenue because his partner was acting like an idiot on social media) a shitty person, a shitty artist, call his band shitty, and basically going from every angle imaginable to try and ruin the persons day.
 
This is not unethical or immoral.

Though it looks like it doesn't matter, and we may see Paranautical Activity back on Steam soon. According to the Code Averace website...



If true, we might see Travis convince Valve to allow it back.

What I would do if I were Murderbeck is to step away from the company, the other dude would then try to repair the relationship with Valve. They could do this the legal way: the other guy buys out Murderbeck, or the illegal way: pay out Murderbeck under the table and pretend he's financially out.

Called it!
 
Maybe Valve was going to put it up after hearing that Mike departed, until they read his "shitty corporation" comment :-P

Nah, just looking at SteamDB now seems to show quite a few games had the same thing just happen to them, so probably just a genuine thing they have to do as part of the process
 
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