Steam un-launches Paranautical Activity (dev threatens to kill Gabe)

http://kotaku.com/indie-dev-threatens-gabe-newell-has-game-removed-from-1648678869
http://kotaku.com/indie-dev-resigns-after-saying-hed-kill-gabe-newell-1648943100
http://www.pcgamesn.com/paranautica...m-after-creator-threatens-to-kill-gabe-newell

I normally don't post these sorts of threads, but hey, someone threatened to kill GabeN.

Apparently there are two developers for the game itself and one threatened to kill Gabe on Twitter after their game launched and the same day it was reflecting as Early Access on the storefront or ads.

He was probably being sarcastic, but man that is one heck of a tantrum. Pretty amazing you can get that far with a game and business and still act that way publicly. The worst part his that the other guy that developed it with him is equally screwed because of his partner's tantrum. That really sucks.

 

Since when has it been even remotely OK to threaten to kill someone, even sarcastically (and there was no indication of sarcasm in that tweet)? Life has consequences and so does choosing who to do business with. A quick read of his twitter feed shows that he is immature and unprofessional. That said, I do feel a little bad for his partner and the rest of that team.

 

10/10

 

fail

 

Guy's a retard if he resorts to that language in a professional industry. Hopefully he won't get back in. There's plenty of other nicer developers who deserve many more chances.

 

So wait...if you want to do business with someone your NOT supposed to threaten to kill them publicly?

 

Who ate the bread? DONOVAN!

 

Well ... at least he got some attention.

 

The game was made with unity as well so i was following it pretty closely for a while.

 

It's unacceptable go around swearing non stop, issuing death threats (regardless if you mean it or not) and when you get it wrong "oh I WAS ONLY JOKING".

I thought I learned that didn't work when I was 5 or something.

Doesn't matter what it was made in. If you can't handle being public, don't be public.

 

I can understand his anger, especially since their original fiasco with steam, but frankly his behavior is unacceptable. I feel sorry for his partner.

 

The question I have is, aren't there more deserving games that need to be pulled? Why can't releasing S*** games on steam be just as damning?

 

Yeah there are lots of bad games on steam air control is still on steam.
http://store.steampowered.com/app/295810/

 

They should remove that game, it's threatening to kill the whole game industry.

 

i cant believe that pile of s*** is still on steam.

 

Greenlight only counts upvotes. Not downvotes.

 

Even his public apology where he said he'd step down was bridge-burning, immature, and melodramatic:

He's calling a potential company S***ty before he even starts. If some company is charitable enough to forgive his tweets, they also have to forgive the fact that he very publicly said "I guess I'll go work for some S***ty corporation now." He needs a person with normal human sensibilities to QA everything he says.

 

lol this is the first time seeing this bull man the vid almost had me in tears laughing lol ...sad sad sad man

 

That's how history class works, man. Gotta get records of people doing stupid stuff so we don't repeat it.

 

Twitter will be a long standing testament to our stupidity.

 

Yeah, and it still says "Try the best flight simulation in the history of computer games today!" Steam should at least add a disclaimer to that statement.

 

So let me get this right.

People fight to be free of curated content, then they cry when it's not curated?

 

Give me back the curated store...I can't imagine why people would want the standards to be lowered to allow them in. It used to be something to strive for...

I'll most likely never be on Steam, but I'd rather never get there than get there by being of meh quality.

 

Not sure what you're talking about. If I go to the Steam front page, I don't see many (if any) apps that are of equivalent quality to Air Control.

And if I drill into each genre separately, I don't see them either.

Not to say it never happens ... we did have Goat Simulator.

 

http://store.steampowered.com/app/221020/

I can name at least a dozen, although I'm not sure I have the time for that...but the quality bar is much, much lower.

 

Yes, there are definitely bad games that exist on Steam.

But I'm talking about games that are easily discovered (from the front page). If I'm average Joe Blow consumer just looking for a fun game, I'll probably be looking off the front pages. There I will find mostly high quality games.

It's the people taking chances on the new, indie games that sometimes get burned. But that's kinda par for the course. Some new games will be good, and some will be bad. That's why they allow you to rate games.

 

I think they need some empathy for the developer... tonnes of indie devs go crazy usually because they are almost broke and spent way to long on a project. When something out of there control has a massive impact on them it's no surprise they flip out.

(Not that his actions were appropriate)

 

That's not really the issue here. If he just flat out insulted Steam / Gabe Newell on Twitter, I doubt the game would have been pulled. It was that whole death threat thing that did it.

 

I'm sure they have plenty of empathy for them. The problem is that death threats cannot be tolerated, and they've reacted in the best way available to them. They would have been perfectly within their rights to report it to the police as well, and (as far as I can tell) they didn't.

I know that most people don't believe he was serious about killing Gabe Newell, but it's impossible to tell real death threats from fake ones, especially when someone is angry and ranting and raving publicly.

 

At least they can still port there games to the console anyway.

 

This is gloriously accurate.

 

Unfortunately, judging someone as fussy, graceless, and arrogant isn't a very good casus belli in a public environment (though it can work in a private one). Steam could very well lose face for making such a subjective judgement, if that information were to become public.

But a death threat is pretty objective, so with that they have strong grounds to take action.

 

Haha unfortunately. It would seem like common sense to most people even without history class that starting wars is bad. Just like I'm sure it's common sense for most people that making death threats to your business partner after landing a sweet deal is bad. But the coverage of the few bad apples make it into history to waste our time.

It would seem that some of us don't need history class because we've got common sense. It would also seem that it's not helping the people it's intended for. Ron White is right, you can't fix stupid.

I dislike social media, but it might prove useful in the future. For now it's just for having a good laugh at the endless void that is human stupidity.

 

Sure, they have the legal right to pull the game at will, but not everyone is going to find him as fussy and arrogant as you do. And the developer did have some reason to be angry, as Valve did actually make a mistake. Therefore, some (though perhaps not most) people will sympathize with him, and lose confidence in the service. Another problem with subjective judgements is it's difficult to know exactly where to draw the line. If Valve treats developers inconsistently, and evidence of that behavior becomes public, they'll also lose face.

But what could that something be? Again, if Valve treats people inconsistently, they run the risk of losing face. Fortunately with a death threat, inconsistency is not a problem.

 

You make a good point that Valve did actually make a mistake. However, this reaction is equivalent to a rich man threatening to kill his neighbor because a leaf from a tree in the neighbor's yard landed on his new car. It's so trivial I'm shocked (even by pessimistic standards) that a human being could be this [momentarily] dumb. If this were a flaw in a mass produced physical product that would cause a huge loss for him then maybe it'd be more understandable, but no damage is done to the product and steam need only change the game from "early access" to "released".

People are a little too emotionally explosive these days. Must be something in the water.

 

I don't think this was some knee-jerk reaction to Mike's stupid tweets, they've had a reputation for being disrespectful and generally birdbrained for the entirety of the dev cycle. The fans even ranted about this on their forum a long time ago.

I seriously doubt they weren't on thin ice with Steam already, this was just the end of the line for tolerance of their lack of professionalism, poor community reputation and general profane/flippant behavior.

 

Think about this from a developer's point of view. Your "window" of getting featured isn't very large because there are also many other developers who want to get featured too. Early Access vs Released status could definitely have large effects on purchasing decisions ... I know it will often affect my own purchasing decisions. Such a mistake could well have large effects on the developer's only chance of getting noticed. I would hate to lose my big chance on a technicality.

The death threat is overboard, but the rest of his speech is understandable, albeit quite "vibrant".

 

Well, I do think Steam should at the very least prevent certain ridiculous claims in the game description. Air Control is considered one of the worst games on Steam, yet it says "Try the best flight simulation in the history of computer games today!" Steam should not let any developer makes such extreme claims, regardless of the quality of the game. That not quite a curation issue. Steam should require that the description be more descriptive and not let any developer make "best game ever" types of claims. Bad games should be allowed, but accurate descriptions should be required for all games. I definitely not advocating for removing Air Control from Steam, though.

Paranautical Activity should not be allowed on Steam, because of the death threat. That is the line that nobody should be allowed to cross regardless of how mad they get.

 

Again, it comes down to subjectivity. Every parent thinks his kids are the cutest, a complete impossibility. Marketing people stretch the truth all the time. Maybe their flight simulator is the best cause it's the funniest, or has the most brains. The best thing you can do is get people to review it. Fortunately, the game was reviewed, and most people didn't like it.

 

Valve made a mistake regarding the game status. A smart developer would have approached Valve and given Valve the option to make it up to them. Maybe Valve could have offered additional coverage/promotion of the game as a way to make up for the accidental Early Access status. A smart developer would have used Valve's mistake to actually come out ahead.

The developer's public ranting was completely counterproductive even before the death threat. The death threat was obviously unacceptable. Instead of seeing Valve's mistake as an opportunity, the developer said everything to get himself banned from working in the industry.

 

At least in mikes case hes only 20 years old so he can change college course or whatever.

 

It's a worrying trend on the internet when people act in an outrageous manner as if they are untouchable. Eventually this just leads to more internet moderation and laws. So, it's worrying for all of us to see a fool make things worse. In fact I'd go as far as to say that it's fairly certain to get worse because of this unchecked behaviour. What we can do about it, is never tolerate or offer *any* support for behaviour like this.

In real life if you saw someone ranting and swearing in a store, security would escort him out so that other customers can have a bit of peace. However, the calm rational customer usually will get listened to and supported.

Shouldn't it be the same online?

 

Talking on your Twitter account is upsetting the peace? Isn't that like the easiest thing in the world not to listen to?

 

Are you kidding me? Twitter has been used to conduct terrorism, riots, organise protests, football fights, gamergate and more. Seriously, come on, do some research.

It's a realtime mass sms.

 

I saw paranautical activity every time I logged into steam before it was released lol. I also think Valve would notice their mistake and then give them a proper time slot in the featured view. It's [hopefully] not a system that is completely automated and Valve's little mistake would cause the game to not appear int he featured window ever.

But eh, I understand people can do and say anything for just about any reason.