PSA: Do not send death threats to digital distribution platform holders
The general public service announcement here is to not send death threats, like, in general, but here's an incident of a developer posting a death threat on Twitter against Valve's Gabe Newell, who runs a little digital distribution shop called Steam.
Polygon has the gritty details, but the shorter version is developer Mike Maulbeck, creator of Paranautical Activity, was having a bad day yesterday with his Steam page. He's also had reported issues with the platform in the past. The latest problem was the Steam page was improperly noting the status of the game and, following a series of escalating tweets, he concluded saying: "I am going to kill gabe newell. He is going to die."
That, don't do that.
Valve responded by pulling the game's sales page and ceasing relations with the developer, noting that it was over the death threat.
Maulbeck tweeted later, "Don't worry guys, everything is gonna be OK, we sold TWELVE copies on non-steam platforms today!!!!!! :D :D :D"
Update: Maulbeck has stated he's leaving Paranautical Activity developer Code Avarice. In a post on the company's site he says, "I've sold my half of Code Avarice ... Given up all my rights to CA as a company, and all it's intellectual properties. I won't receive any money from the sale of Paranautical Activity or any future games CA develops, I won't be consulted on business decisions, and I won't have any hand in development."
