Valve pulls game from Steam after dev makes Gabe Newell death threat

This is a case that falls squarely in the camp known as ‘shooting oneself in the foot’.

Mike Maulbeck’s new game Paranautical Activity arrived on Steam yesterday and was, due to an error, listed as an Early Access title. Maulbeck’s reaction? An ill-advised Twitter rant that included the following:

I hope by the time my next game comes out steam doesn’t have this awful fucking monopoly anymore.”

By the time they fix this we’ll no longer be on the front page and their response will be ‘oh well’”

I am so fucking done dealing with fucking incompetent shits.”

Fucking Steam is just fucking taking money out of my pocket, misinforming people that my game is in fucking Early Access.”

First they force me to delay the game because I can’t release on weekends, now this. Steam is the most incompetent piece of fucking shit.”

Crucially, Maulbeck also Tweeted the following (which has since been removed):

I am going to kill Gabe Newell. He is going to die.”

The result of which was that Valve pulled his game, with Valve telling Polygon: "Yes, we have removed the game’s sales page and ceased relations with the developer after he threatened to kill one of our employees."

Maulbeck added to the site: "I have since obviously replied to them saying that I didn’t mean what I said and pleaded that they consider the monopoly they have on the PC market before totally writing us off but let’s be real. If they took the game off the store, they’re fucking sure about their decision. There’s probably nothing to be done."

The dev has since taken to Twitter to plead his case and even attack Valve for its actions.

Welp. PA no longer on Steam. I’m done making videogames now. It sucked while it lasted.”

Mike blows up at Valve on Twitter. Valve wins because Valve.

It’s just not possible to make a living in this industry without steam, so I’m just out.”

It makes me happy that there are people out there who, on this life shattering career ending day, want nothing but to call me a fucker.”

People telling me it’s fucking stupid to say I wanna kill Gabe. Can I set up a "no shit" autoresponse on twitter?

Don’t worry guys, everything is gonna be OK, we sold TWELVE copies on non-steam platforms today! We were selling more than that a minute on Steam.”