Update: In a post on the Code Avarice blog, Mike Maulbeck announced that he is stepping down from the company, and has sold his interest in it to fellow developer Travis Pfenning. The move is an effort to convince Valve that it “has no reason to harbor any more ill will towards the company, and maybe even if we can’t see Paranautical Activity restored [to Steam], at least future Code Avarice games may be allowed onto the platform.”
After apologizing again for his intemperate tweet, Maulbeck noted that “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.”
Original Story
Voxel-based first-person shooter Paranautical Activity has been removed from Steam after creator Mike Maulbeck tweeted a death threat at Valve co-founder and managing director Gabe Newell.
The incident can be traced back to yesterday morning, when Paranautical Activity was featured on the front page of Steam as part of a list of Halloween-themed games. That listing prominently noted that the game was in “Early Access,” however, even though it had just progressed to a full release. This oversight led to a series of irate, profanity-laced tweets from Maulbeck about Steam—“misinforming people that my game is in fucking early access. … Steam is the most incompetent piece of fucking shit… fucking Steam is just fucking taking money out of my pocket. … I hope by the time my next game comes out steam doesn’t have this awful fucking monopoly anymore.”