Indie Dev Threatens to Kill Gabe Newell, Valve Pulls His Game From Steam

[TheHomelessHero]

As much as this guy deserves it, not only did he screw himself over, he screwed over his artist, who had absolutely nothing to do with the incident, and essentially had is life ruined from this one stupid mistake of his co-worker. Not to mention that he had every right to be angry with the false information on the banner, potentially a large number of sales were lost by that alone, but venting it publicly is absolutely stupid, for any dev, and this should have been handled behind the scenes, still, just look at the twitter of the artist, absolutely depressing shit right here, feel so bad for him.

https://twitter.com/Vallisca3x3x3

Sure he's over reacting to a certain extent as well, but his entire career just fell apart. Just going to leave this here to show the situation isn't that black and white (Picture is huge, don't know how to resize through the forum without going back and editing it.):

Spoiler

 

[major_chaos]

On one hand, steam is a terrible platform with a horrifying near monopoly, and Valve is a awful greasy company that seems to show zero concern for indies and I totaly see why he would be really mad at them.
On the other hand at this point Gabe is the Alpha and Omega of PC, the cult leader, the judge jury and executioner, and making death threats against him is a really fucking stupid plan.

EDIT: Also really sad to see the artist for the game, who didn't even say anything, is apparently getting attacked by journos and random people (presumably Valve zelots). Guy just saw his career shatter into tiny pieces for something he had no control over, step off him you shitty parasites.

 

[EyeReaper]

Man, This guy is a huge idiot.

Clearly his Halloween name should have been Darth Maulbeck.

 

[gamegod25]

Reasonable: Being upset that your game is not getting the support it should.

Unreasonable: Making public death threats over it!

Look, in the heat of the moment we have all thought or said things we shouldn't have. But when making comments on the internet you can't take that back, everyone will see it! Twitter is the worst thing to happen to PR, so any people don't know when to shut their mouth.

(Captcha: no regrets)

Bet he has a few of them XD

 

[KoudelkaMorgan]

The guy said something dumb because of a legitimate problem (to them anyway) they were experiencing. Sadly its out there forever and all that.

I wouldn't call that a death threat, at least not a credible one in the least, but people can respond to it however they see fit and I think that they did so perfectly appropriately.

That being said, I hate Steam. I refuse to use it, and besides loathing their monolithic stranglehold on PC game distribution, I'm not so much a fan of Valve's actual games either. I liked Portal, and to a far lesser extent Portal 2. You take out Cave Johnson and that game is trash. Everything else didn't excite me at all. Half Life 3 will never come out, because there is just no way to please ANYONE now. They would be selling it to the children or grandchildren of the people that played the original at this point.

 

[Ima Lemming]

Lesson 1: Don't make death threats on Twitter
Lesson 2: Don't write anything on Twitter when you're pissed off
Lesson 3: If you're stupid enough to both write and make threats on Twitter when you're pissed off, you probably shouldn't be making games in the first place.

My philosophy is "Don't write anything anywhere public when you're pissed off"

 

[xGrimReaperzZ]

You don't make a scene and expect no one to react, my condolences go out to the second Paranautical Activity developer.

Isn't that the most selfish and irresponsible thing a dev in his situation can do? to gamble with both his and his colleague's careers?

Indie devs and social media have never been a good thing, indie devs don't have the capacity and the staff to handle social media, the reason this all went down is because the dev that got angry got tons of messages and tweets about how he was trying to censor criticism by still having the game be under the early-access program despite advertising the final update.

One could also say that Valve is in the wrong here for paying attention to a dev making a scene and about how scary valve is due to it having what might aswell be a monopoly on PC, i don't fully agree, but i wouldn't bash anyone for having such a rational differing opinion.

 

[Erttheking]

Sooooooo, Gaben doesn't announce it all over twitter, leaves his house for feeling threatened, blame gamergate, has his friend plug his work and go on MSNBC? Well, well, well ...

Careful. You'll have the SJW's on you for trying to compare the suffering of women in the industry to the suffering of men int he industry if that comment gets out.

Is there any chance you could not reduce to slurs that throw everyone under the same blanket? Or can I start using crude terms that mock everyone that identifies as pro-Gamergate?

 

[ASnogarD]

Steam isn't a monopoly, it doesn't prevent you from releasing titles but merely decides on its own merit which titles to allow access to its established userbase, which is ironic as Steam gets a lot of flack for allowing any old rubbish in but gets criticism if it tries block any.
I feel Steam is like a huge shop, just be aware of what you are buying and don't expect Steam to keep you safe from shovelware.

The flack is because of the inconsistency and lack of transparency and feedback, an indie dev can make a quality functional game that many or even most people would consider "good" (at the right price point ofc) and get turned by Valve with no explanation. They can get huge numbers of Greenlight votes by attracting the attention of the community and still get either turned down or left in limbo without a decision both with no explanation, yet if they go to "greatgamespublishizerXOXOX" and agree to hand over a huge percentage of any potential income they can get on most of the time (although some still get refused for bullshit reasons, like "we haven't reached a decision on your Greenlight application...).

Meanwhile "greatgamespublishizerXOXOX" is trawling endless back catalogues of broken or garbage shovelware and can list several a week, the shovelware spam is also hurting the visibility and sales of the indies that either managed to get accepted, got through Greenlight or sold their soul to a scalping publisher to get at least some income. Its also hurting the trust of the consumers and making them wary of the shovelware and unwilling to take a chance on indie games in general, so even if they manage to get on there in the first place they are still suffering because of Valves policies.

I agree that Valve are not doing themselves any favours with the whole Greenlight fiasco and publisher favouritism, but its understandable...

Valve started Greenlight as a means for the gaming consumer to vote in which games got the go ahead, and it turned into a popularity contest instead as consumers en-mass cant really be trusted to make decisions regarding a piece of software's viability.

Publishers in turn are entities that revolve around pushing software produced by studios, so if the software is rubbish it is the publisher that should take the hit for publishing rubbish, so its natural for Valve to simply allow publishers to publish material... Steam is more of a market place, and Valve are the landowner and its not their place to judge tastes (just illegal or material that breaches ToS).

Don't forget Valve recently unveiled the 'curator' system where the consumer can follow a popular persons choice of games and use that as a base to evaluate the value of a piece of software.
If you agree with Jim Sterling's reviews and choice of games, you can check his 'curator choices' and see if there is any in there, rather than mucking through the flood of shovelware.

Between Greenlight and this new 'curator' system, I would be inclined to say that Valve is indeed trying (albeit slowly) to empower its userbase to make better decisions, which is better than unilaterally vetoing titles based on some obscure set of scales.

Steam is only required if the title uses Steamworks, otherwise the game developers / publishers are free to publish the title as they see fit... hardly a unreasonable situation to expect Steamworks enabled products to require Steam.
I cant see Valve being the big nasty villain, just slow as usual for Valve who did basically invent the soon tm meme for Valve time

 

[Leonardo Huizar]

What kind of idiot lets their victim know they are going to do them?

Newell might not look the the athletic type but you dont give em a head start.

Sheesh, bunch of amateurs I swear.

 

[Thanatos2k]

You know what is really "the most incompetent piece of fucking shit" and "fucking taking money out of my pocket"?

Most games in early access.

 

[J Tyran]

I cant see Valve being the big nasty villain, just slow as usual for Valve who did basically invent the soon tm meme for Valve time

I don't see them as a villain either and I have been trying not paint them that way, they are in a difficult position. Primarily they where a developer that wanted a secure DRM and digital storefront for their own games, slowly they earned the trust of the consumer after the initial hiccups and started selling other games.

They largely pioneered the game digital distribution model, or at the very least provided the first service that gave decent enough service to snowball. The market exploded and they have tens of millions of users and they have found themselves being the primary digital distribution service, they often try to learn their lessons but they are still making it up as they go along and unfortunately when it comes to indie games everything they have done has either been worse or spun off a whole new series of problems.

Also like you say "Valve time" is showing itself to be very much in effect too.

Personally I don't think they have it, the shovelware is hurting their image and the indies? Do you think its such a big coincidence that more and more indie games are coming to PC second or last when they used to come first? Sony are throwing cash and support at indies, they are rolling out the red carpet for them. Combine this with the bonus of a single unified platform with good dev tools and a company that curates its content well, gives them decent visibility on the storefront and also will actively market your product for you (Sony are even giving screen time to indies in primetime PS4 TV ads, at least here anyway) and they are starting to jump ship.

Where Valve was once the best hope for an indie to make it now they are hurting them, Sony is going out of their way to help them now in a way Valve never has. Not that I am claiming this is a PC vs console issue, just that they are weakening the PC platform and hurting us and themselves. Some of those devs might never come back, they might get bought or absorbed into a console centric publisher or they may just stick with the platform that is easier to work with and has the best support for them. Even then the games might come later, Valve need to do something before it becomes an exodus.

Meanwhile we can all laugh at Microsoft, instead of trying to compete or fix anything they are trying to lock the small guys intro restrictive contracts and clauses instead.

 

[Scrythe]

Steam is a monopoly, guys.

This means that Origin, Desura, Green Man Gaming, GoG.com, Uplay, XBLA, PSN, DotEmu, GamersGate (no, not that one), and all of those Nintendo-owned digital distros no longer exist!

I, for one, welcome our new video game overlords, and may the number three forever remain cursed and unlucky.

 

[Covarr]

Phil Fish 2.0.

Makes an ok game (in this case, incredibly average), chucks a hissy fit over something silly, /quits industry.

Nah. Fish may have an attitude problem at times, but he usually tries his best to keep it in check. He was often the recipient of death threats, but I don't think he ever made any. At worst, he tended more toward whiny than dangerous.

And when he got screwed over by an online storefront's silly policies, he actually handled it pretty well:

To the less-than-1% who are getting screwed, we sincerely apologize. We know this hurts you the most, because you?re the ones who put the most times into the game. And this breaks our hearts. We hope you dont think back on your time spent in FEZ as a total waste.

It wasn?t an easy decision, but in the end, paying such a large sum of money to jump through so many hoops just doesn?t make any sense. We already owe microsoft a LOT of money for the privilege of being on their platform. People often mistakenly believe that we got paid by Microsoft for being exclusive to their platform. Nothing could be further from the truth. WE pay THEM.

He then went onto port his game to a bunch of other platforms without ridiculous $50K patch policies.

I'm not one of Phil Fish's big defenders. As often as not, when he talks he just grates on my nerves and pisses me off. But there's a big difference between being an insulting, outspoken jerk with a big head and actually threatening to kill someone.

P.S. Thanks

 

[Tiamat666]

I find it hard to find sympathy for someone who uses such foul language in public.

Also, in the age of terrorism, total surveillance and overzealous security agencies, posting something like "I am going to kill [real human being]" on the Internet is always a bad idea.

 

[Deathfish15]

Phil Fish 2.0.

Makes an ok game (in this case, incredibly average), chucks a hissy fit over something silly, /quits industry.

Completely and incredibly wrong. Phil Fish made a great game but received harassment through social media, a "media critic" made personal attacks against him, and other things. Fish 'rage' quit the industry not because some platform was slow on selling his game -it sold great by word of mouth- but because of the toxicity of gamers as a whole (the vocal ones). It really doesn't help the industry to have tools such as those at GameTrailers siting on their high seats not just judging, but verbally assaulting game developers without an ounce of experience in making games, programing, or proper education at a base level (just watch their shows and you'll know exactly what I mean).

 

[Elfgore]

I'm sure some more things may be happening then we know, maybe Steam has been stringing them along. But as of now, this developer is an immature jerk. You're Steam release may have been rough, but that doesn't mean you go to Twitter and start spewing things like an angry teenager.

I feel bad for his co-worker, he got drawn into this by the creator's actions. But I have no sympathy for the creator. He did this to himself and now he has to deal with the consequences. Just like every other human.

Edit: Looks like a close friend of the guy made an open letter [http://i.imgur.com/1yIciRH.png] to Gaben. Totally unbiased and neutral. Cause you know, he's young and worked hard and stuff.

 

[Karadalis]

Sooooooo, Gaben doesn't announce it all over twitter, leaves his house for feeling threatened, blame gamergate, has his friend plug his work and go on MSNBC? Well, well, well ...

That made me laugh. I think this should be the main focus of this article this is an example of what a normal person does after a threat not a professional victim like you know who.

... Yeah... Because a general twitter message from an angry guy venting on twitter whose identity is known is totally the same thing a specific direct threat from an unknown source referencing a massacre at a certain time and place where there is no effort to control lethal weapons.
Like, identical. Right?

A number of specific threats.

In any case, the idea that a victim has to respond a certain way, or that they magically don't count for soem reason...that's a very common form of victim blaming there.

Nope.. its called doing the smart thing.

No one blamed anyone for receiving death threats (kept for cave people aparantly) but they blamed people for behaving like morons after receiving said threats.

Its one thing to actually receive threads, its another one to jump into the mousetrap after it has been set. That is why you listen to the authorities first and foremost and dont go onto the internet to use said threats to get more donation money.

I simply cant sympathize with people who use threats against their person to make money, no matter who it is btw. Because it shows that these "victims" dont take the threats serious themselves and that they use them as cheap PR.

Also i would be more worried about the guy whose face is known threatening me then some unknown faceless person on the net that announces a massacre weeks before a big event.

It should be obvious why...

 

[Shadow-Phoenix]

To be fair some of the blame does lie with Valve too. The people responsible should have done their jobs correctly and not advertised the game as early access. The guy should have not issued a death threat or gotten a upset as much as he did but both parties are at fault for this one.

This is what I'm focussing on right now, I know the death threat was made and now dealt with but hardly anyone here is questioning or judging Valve for the actual cause and affect, the fact the system didn't update for him at all and people will still indeed believe it's still in early access can still hurt sales since we're now at this point in early access where you deliver or you die and he was trying to deliver but in the end it all broke down and I know his patience is not the best from the looks of it but Valve should still do their job properly and they still need to sort the early access mess out, though I suppose people here who love Valve to bits aren't going to Judge them due to the belief that they are their friend and can do no wrong and can easily be forgiven.