Mistakes happen, it's just a fact of life. We know that some mistakes can be frustrating, or even infuriating to deal with, but in the workplace, a certain level of professionalism must be maintained. That goes double for the head of a company. If one gets in over their head, it could ruin everything.
For example: if Steam were to mislabel a game, it is acceptable to place a complaint and possibly have the game re-categorized. It is never acceptable to threaten to kill the online service's CEO. If the second option is chosen, then the game will be pulled from the service forever and years of work will have been in vain.
Unfortunately, this is the case for Mike Maulbeck, head of Code Avarice. After his game, Paranautical Activity, was completed, it was set to be fully released on Steam. Unfortunately, the game was mislabeled as 'Early Access' (which basically means development is still in progress). Instead of talking to Steam in a professional manner, Maulbeck took to twitter and threatened to kill Gabe Newell, the current CEO of Steam.
The tweet has since been deleted, but that didn't do much. The game was immediately pulled from Steam's store and the entire development team was banned from the service altogether. Obviously, Steam has to deal with complaints on a regular basis, just as any company does, but death threats obviously cross a line.
Initially, Maulbeck did admit to his mistakes on Twitter, though few would really call it an apology.
@RedPandaGamer valve did. because they fucked up and I said mean things.
— Mike Murderbeck (@SpooderW) October 20, 2014
Maulbeck would later speak with IGN, and gave more details on exactly what had happened. When it comes down to it, Maulbeck was worried that labeling the game as Early Access would cripple the game's sales, and that he'd already been receiving questions about the listing:
"I knew this would greatly cripple sales and confuse customers. I in fact had already begun getting tweets and emails from people claiming I marked it as early access myself to try and avoid criticism of the final version.
"This being a project I spent years of my life on, I was very frustrated by this mistake valve made, so I tweeted a series of tweets calling them incompetent that eventually ended in me saying 'I swear I'm gonna fucking kill gabe' or something. A statement I obviously didn't mean, but nonetheless was totally unacceptable and driven entirely by the heat of frustration I was feeling at the time."
Then, earlier today, Maulbeck would address his fans through the developer's blog. It was here that Maulbeck announced that he would be stepping down as the project leader, and hoped that leaving Code Avarice would heal the wounds between Steam and the development team.
"As a result of my actions, Paranautical Activity, a game made by 4 or 5 people depending on who you count as team members, was removed from steam. I feel is it my responsibility to step down from Code Avarice completely so that Steam has no reason to harbor any more ill will towards the company, and maybe even if we can't see Paranautical Activity restored, at least future Code Avarice games may be allowed onto the platform.
"I'm really, deeply sorry that my short sighted, hot tempered actions resulted in not only my own dreams and aspirations being destroyed, but those of the entire team I worked with. I'm sorry that my statements made Valve and/or Gabe uncomfortable and upset (rightfully so)."
It's a shame, too because the game really did look cool. Paranautical Activity was designed as a mixture of randomized games like Spelunky and classic first-person shooters like Doom and Quake. It was fast-paced, colorful, and could have been something truly different.
However, in today's gaming market, Steam makes up for the vast majority of PC sales. While the game is still available on other platforms, not having a release on the biggest service in the market may be a blow that Paranautical Activity can't recover from.
It's ironic: Maulbeck was worried that Steam's mistake would cripple the sales of his game, and his response effectively guaranteed that Paranautical Activity would suffer. There's been no response from Steam just yet, but as they stand now, things don't look good for Code Avarice or Paranautical Activity.
