Game Returns to Steam After Dev Threatens Gabe Newell
Paranautical Activity "Atonement Edition" published on Valve's platform following IP sale to new publisher.
Paranautical Activity, the roguelike FPS that was removed from Steam after one of its developers publicly threatened to "kill" Gabe Newell, has reappeared on the PC games platform.
A special "Atonement Edition" emerged on Steam after its developer, Code Avarice, sold the IP to publisher Digerati.
Just sold PC rights for Paranautical Activity to @DigeratiDM. What could it mean?
— Code Avarice (@CodeAvarice) December 16, 2014
Back in October, an embarrassing flurry of emotional decisions led the Code Avarice developer Mike Maulbeck to claim that Steam "is the most incompetent piece of fucking shit". He made this remark, along with a string of others, moments after his game was published on Steam.
"Fucking Steam is just fucking taking money out of my pocket. Misinforming people that my game is in fucking early access," he complained.
"I am going to kill Gabe Newell. He is going to die," he added.
Shortly afterwards, the game disappeared from Steam, and Maulbeck resigned from his position at Code Avarice and, at the time, suggested he may not return to games again.
Maulbeck said at the time he had sold his half of the company to another employee, and has given up all his rights and ownership of the studio's intellectual properties, meaning he had closed off all routes of income from the studio.
But about a month later he returned to the studio. Code Avarice wrote on its website: "This is probably not hugely surprising to some of you, but Mike couldn't commit to his decision to leave Code Avarice. [Co-founder Travis Pfenning] publicly denounced his departure, and in the weeks following his official stepping down Mike had second thoughts."
This wasn't the final chapter in the saga, however, as it emerged on Valentines Day that the game--called Paranautical Activity--had returned to Steam, with the suffix "Deluxe Atonement Edition".
According to Maulbeck's Twitter feed, he is now looking for a job elsewhere.
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