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

[Sight Unseen]

While, yes, the Dev was incredibly stupid by doing such a think people are glossing over what Valve did wrong.

While 'Don't send Death threats' is the obvious moral of the story, there's also the new moral that 'Valve always doesn't do good.' Like this guy for his comment or not the truth is that his game had JUST released out of early access after years of work, and Valve falsely advertised it as being still within early-access. And with how many people condone early access, that could be a huge hit to sales. Especially on the game's first day.

And to an indie dev, as opposed to a Triple A publisher, those sales mean a LOT. So yea, I won't defend the guy for posting stupid stuff online, but maybe we should recognize Valve isn't a saint in all this either?

So email or call Valve and politely ask them to fix what was most likely just a database error and not something meant to be malicious. Problem solved.

Going to Twitter to throw a hissy fit was the absolute worst thing he could have done.

 

[JoshuaMadoc]

Radio Shack deserves better than you, Maulbeck. Kindly leave. Forever.

 

[Skeleon]

I don't think this is necessarily funny or a "lesson". He might be serious about suicidal thoughts. He sounds unstable. He might indeed have had a bit of a breakdown. Let's hope this doesn't actually go any further and he doesn't hurt himself.

 

[Somethingfake]

Phil Fish 2.0.

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

Pretty much this. He could have just sent an email saying" bit of a cockup here could you fix it please?" Instead, the moron has a tantrum and gets (rightfully fucked)

Only thing he's right about is the fact Steam is a monopoly pretty much.

 

[Steve the Pocket]

Basically, there's a bit of a problem not just with games, but with programming in general. An awful lot of people got into it as a hobby, and still see it as something that is supposed to be fun rather than taking too seriously. You don't see the same thing in most other professions because children rarely spend years playing at being lawyers or whale biologists, but with programming there are quite a few people who think they are still children playing with their toys rather than responsible adults working in an actual job. See all the companies wasting money on "fun" workplaces and trying to emulate the rock star lifestyle, and frequently going bust because of it.

For what it's worth, this is also likely what's behind why Valve is so goshdarn unprofessional so much of the time. I don't know how things were done in the early days when Half-Life and Ricochet were in development, but nowadays a big chunk of the company's crew are former mod teams that got snatched up along with the games they created, and the way the company is run fosters the mentality that this is still their hobby rather than their job, so nobody has any incentive to actually buckle down and do stuff that needs doing.

 

[Kielgasten]

Am I to understand that the OP thinks murder threats are ok, as long as the victim is not the hand that feeds you?
Because the lack of denoucement sure makes it seem so...

 

[Toploader7]

Most Indies would be over the moon if their game was on the front page header, regardless of a minor mislabeling. The sales boost you get from it is simply incredible.

 

[Mr. Q]

Wow! Out of a hundred thousand sperm, this ************ was the fastest?

It's one thing to be pissed about a system that may be flawed, that's understandable. But when you threaten someone's live over it, you're officially living proof that your parents didn't give 1/8 of a shit in raising you properly.

Next time you wanna burn a bridge, make damn sure you're not on it when it goes up.

 

[Karadalis]

While, yes, the Dev was incredibly stupid by doing such a think people are glossing over what Valve did wrong.

While 'Don't send Death threats' is the obvious moral of the story, there's also the new moral that 'Valve always doesn't do good.' Like this guy for his comment or not the truth is that his game had JUST released out of early access after years of work, and Valve falsely advertised it as being still within early-access. And with how many people condone early access, that could be a huge hit to sales. Especially on the game's first day.

And to an indie dev, as opposed to a Triple A publisher, those sales mean a LOT. So yea, I won't defend the guy for posting stupid stuff online, but maybe we should recognize Valve isn't a saint in all this either?

So email or call Valve and politely ask them to fix what was most likely just a database error and not something meant to be malicious. Problem solved.

Going to Twitter to throw a hissy fit was the absolute worst thing he could have done.

Aparantly calling them didnt work, it seemed that valve tried to sabotage the game from the get go.

Honestly thought i wonder why he attacked Gabe... I highly doubt gabe sits in his office all day playing god on greenlight or sabotaging indie devs for shits and giggles.

The man has more important things to do and i highly doubt he works in the customer department either.

This sounds more like someone on support had it out for this guy then anything else

 

[PunkRex]

Tis the price gaming pays for the internet.

By making your medium easier to get into you also open the door for people who havn't gone threw what most would call 'professional' career paths. I swear, half of these developers/game journalists wouldn't last 5 minutes in a retail job, and I'm not talking about the soul crushing boredom involved.

F*cking artists.

 

[Pirate Of PC Master race]

Ha ha. Allegedly this mistake lasted less than 3 hours.

What a fun. And possibly divine retribution.

Edit: This could be a good example on "How to ruin your game company in 3 hours".

 

[geizr]

There is a small town with one local pub, and a guy walks into the pub. He's been asking the pub for weeks about his favorite beer and why they don't have it. The bartender at the pub sometimes gives a lame excuse or just doesn't say anything regarding why the beer isn't in stock. One day, the guy finally decides he's had enough. He walks down to the pub and pulls out a knife on the bartender and threatens to cut out the bartender's heart unless they start stocking his favorite beer. The bartender, in response, calls the police and has the guy arrested, as well as banning him from ever coming back to the pub.

At the police station, while being questioned, the guy admits that it was probably stupid to pull out a knife on the bartender (only cause the results didn't turn out so great for him, not cause he feels any true remorse), but then adds, "but it was all his fault for not stocking my favorite beer."

Grow up, man up, and take some responsibility for your own stupidity. Don't try to pass off your actions as being someone else's fault. That's how a 5-year-old thinks. It absolutely kills me, sometimes, to see this endemic immaturity associated with coding, computers, the Internet, and video games, in general. Why in the hell do people on the Internet really think threatening the life of another individual to be an okay and acceptable social interaction? Threatening someone else's life is the personal equivalent of one nation declaring war upon another. In both cases, if you're going to do something like that, you better KNOW and be fucking WILLING to ACCEPT the full CONSEQUENCES that such a declaration entails. In other words, THINK BEFORE you OPEN YOUR MOUTH. I don't care how mad you are or how much someone may have done you wrong; you need to step back, calm down, and put some thought into your next actions before doing them.

 

[nuclearday]

Seems like a pretty sad state of affairs all around.

I haven't done any research into how long the banner ads were inaccurate - but I think it's safe to say there were more constructive ways to respond to that problem regardless.

Indie devs don't generally have the benefit of a team of PR people coaching them and trying to keep them from putting their foot in their mouth. I'm generally going to be more forgiving of an indie guy for saying something stupid than someone from a giant megacorp who really should know better.

That said - no matter how much you hate the people you're in business with, and whether or not they had it coming there are certain things you just shouldn't do no matter what.

 

[F-I-D-O]

This is absolutely ridiculous... Why would you need a 'Halloween themed' username if your name is already Maulbeck?

OT: I wonder what happens for people who already have the game. I'm going to assume they'll still get to keep it as has been the case in the past for games that were made unavailable for whatever reason.

I feel bad for the other half of that dev team, seems like going to be completely shafted by his partner's stupidity through no fault of his own.

I got the game through a humble bundle a while back, and it's still in my library. Card drops and achievements are also still unlocked (the only change is card prices on the marketplace spiked to obscene values). Not a bad game, but not exactly revolutionary. A good way to kill time, but the general refusal to explain upgrades or not allowing the player to drop disliked items causes annoyances.

Repeating the quoted poster, I also feel bad for the artist, who's said a couple things on twitter. He got caught in the crossfire, and it doesn't seem fair. Hopefully the game can get back on steam without Maulbeck attached to it, at the very least, so the rest of the dev team isn't completely screwed.

Maulbeck has stepped down from the company (http://codeavarice.com/), but who knows if that'll change anything.

I'm reminded of a scene from Indie Game: The Movie where one of the Team Meat guys is freaking out over Meat Boy not having an ad Xbox store. He sent an angry email to his Xbox contact, and that was that. He said some mean things on camera and vowed not to work with Microsoft anymore, but he didn't say anything publicly this close to release.

EDIT: I could see Maulbeck's major complaint with the Early Access moniker still being attached to his game, seeing as the new steam storefront allows users to block all early access games from their feed. If the banner wasn't just a graphic mistake but a tagging error, this could cause a loss of sales at launch, a major issue as public focus shifts so fast, especially in the ever more-cramped holiday season. Combined with not being able to release except during Valve's business days, I can see the compliant. That said, the death threat is by no means warranted.

 

[LordLundar]

Indie devs don't generally have the benefit of a team of PR people coaching them and trying to keep them from putting their foot in their mouth.

Well from what I've been seeing lately I wonder if the corporations have people for that either.

 

[xdiesp]

Gamergate in a nutshell.

Imagine the shitstorm had it been Gone Home...

 

[jdogtwodolla]

If I remember right, there were two devs on this game.

I wonder how the other guy feels.

 

[Darkmantle]

*Phew* Its a good thing Gabe is a guy, because otherwise this would be terrible!

I bet Bob Chapman considers him a "good target"

Of course, Gabe is "privileged", and threats made to him should be seen as just a reaction to the patriarchy.

And also, a large number of people in this thread seem to be justifying the indie devs behavior and threats. I just want you to know that according to Jim's "Stupid Sexy Bayonetta" video you are condoning harassment and threats under the guise of not condoning threats.

Oh wait, maybe I'm wrong, Jim specifically said female dev, I guess it's okay for this dev to threaten Gaben then.


OT: this guy got exactly what he deserved. My understanding is that the game was not even up a day with the incorrect banner. Try to be mature about it and deal with it as an adult, rather than with threats. And yes, his game had trouble getting on steam, from what I've (admittedly briefly) read, steam had some good reason for doing keeping it off in the first place, and they let it on anyway in the end.

EDIT

If I remember right, there were two devs on this game.

I wonder how the other guy feels.

Pretty terrible, his twitter is linked on page two I think.

 

[Vigormortis]

While, yes, the Dev was incredibly stupid by doing such a think people are glossing over what Valve did wrong.

While 'Don't send Death threats' is the obvious moral of the story, there's also the new moral that 'Valve always doesn't do good.' Like this guy for his comment or not the truth is that his game had JUST released out of early access after years of work, and Valve falsely advertised it as being still within early-access. And with how many people condone early access, that could be a huge hit to sales. Especially on the game's first day.

And to an indie dev, as opposed to a Triple A publisher, those sales mean a LOT. So yea, I won't defend the guy for posting stupid stuff online, but maybe we should recognize Valve isn't a saint in all this either?

It was an error in the status update system. Valve were alerted to the error immediately after the game went on sale and resolved the problem within two hours.

This didn't stop Maulbeck from going ape-shit and throwing a Twit-Fit.

Valve's system messed up, sure, but the only one coming out of this with egg on their face is Maulbeck and his (unfortunate) partner. And somehow I'm having an extremely hard time buying into the notion that two hours of "false advertising" would hurt his overall sales.

Besides, from what I've been hearing, Maulbeck is kind of obnoxious all around. Routinely going on hateful rants on Twitter and banning negative community reviews. I've also heard there's been persistent complaints about promised features not being added or dropped entirely without provocation or an explanation.

I haven't looked into all of these claims, admittedly, but then again I don't really care. He acted incredibly unprofessional in his dealings with a business partner and faced the consequences of those actions. As far as I'm concerned, that's the end of the story.

For him, anyway. If the partner wasn't a party to these threats then I sincerely hope his career isn't affected by this. I wish him the best of luck.

 

[Vigormortis]

For what it's worth, this is also likely what's behind why Valve is so goshdarn unprofessional so much of the time. I don't know how things were done in the early days when Half-Life and Ricochet were in development, but nowadays a big chunk of the company's crew are former mod teams that got snatched up along with the games they created, and the way the company is run fosters the mentality that this is still their hobby rather than their job, so nobody has any incentive to actually buckle down and do stuff that needs doing.

Actually, they do. Their individual incomes are based on the assessments of the other employees of the company. If someone isn't pulling their weight their paychecks will take a hit.

For that matter, as has been explained by Newell on several occasions, one of the primary requirements for employment at the company isn't just ones skills and qualifications, but rather one's ability to deliver content and projects on time and on budget.[footnote]Even if ValveTime is a thing.[/footnote]

Why people still hold onto this notion that Valve is comprised entirely of a collective of naive lay-a-bouts who sit around all day doing nothing is beyond me. The company's output since 1998 should be evidence enough to the contrary.