Studio changes policy after dev threatens to kill Gabe Newell

In October, after discovering issues with his game Paranautical Activity on Steam, independent developer Mike Maulbeck published a series of angry tweets that concluded with, "I am going to kill gabe newell. He is going to die."

Newell is the founder of Valve, the company that runs Steam, the internet's largest gaming digital distribution hub. Because of the threat, Valve pulled Paranautical Activity from Steam and cut ties with Maulbeck's studio, Code Avarice. That same day, Maulbeck announced he was leaving Code Avarice entirely.

Today, Code Avarice announced that Maulbeck is back with the studio. "Mike couldn't commit to his decision to leave Code Avarice," reads the studio's blog post. "[Co-owner Travis Pfenning] publicly denounced his departure, and in the weeks following his official stepping down Mike had second thoughts. Looking for a new source of income was extremely overwhelming and when it finally came time to put pen to paper, Mike and Travis agreed the best thing to do would be to have Mike return to Code Avarice."

Maulbeck and Pfenning are taking a step back from the spotlight with a few changes to company policy: "The second half of this announcement is that we're taking steps to make Code Avarice more about the games and less about the people making them. From now on rather than blog posts being written and signed by one of the developers, they will all be co-written by Mike AND Travis, and written from the perspective of the company rather than an individual."

[Image: Code Avarice]