Mike Maulbeck Rejoins Code Avarice After Threatening To Kill Gabe Newell

Mike Maulbeck, the 20-year-old co-founder of developer Code Avarice, rejoins the studio he co-founded after beginning the process of leaving the company for good. The resignation came after the culmination of a volley of vitriolic tweets from Mr. Maulbeck against Steam, which had miscategorized Code Avarice’s game Paranautical Activity on the Steam storefront. Mr. Maulbeck felt the situation would lead to a serious impact in sales for the game, and sent out a volley of angry tweets which included a threat to kill Valve’s founder, Gabe Newell. Mr. Maulbeck later apologized, but the damage had already been done, and the studio’s game had been yanked from the Steam store and all developer relations terminated.

The fallout from the situation gained attention in the video game press, and Mr. Maulbeck made the announcement on the Code Avarice site that he would be stepping down from the company.

“I’ve sold my half of Code Avarice to Travis. 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. I’m out.”

Either as a genuine gesture of accepting responsibility for his actions, or as an attempt as a PR move, the commitment by Mr. Maulbeck to leave the company could not be kept realistically. In an official post on the Code Avarice Dev Blog, it was announced that Maulbeck would be returning to the company, but that several changes to the developer would be put in place.

The changes with Mike Maulbeck coming back to Code Avarice include all blog posts being co-written by Mike and Travis, the heads of the studio. The posts will also be written from the perspective of the studio rather than the individual. An official studio Twitter account was made for the studio, making updates to the projects easy to find, and communication with the fans more direct.

There has been no word from Valve if the public apology and more mature corporate behavior from Maulbeck and Code Avarice are enough to rebuild the bridges that were burned. The developer confirmed with Eurogamer that Valve has not communicated to them since this news was made public.

The video game industry showcases passion for one’s hobby, a passion that can drive people to pour everything they have financially and emotionally into a project. Sometimes the people who were never meant for public discourse find themselves in positions that would not be best served by their personality types. Mr. Maulbeck previously admitted that he has a temper.

“My temper and tendency to use twitter to vent has been a consistent problem since I entered the games industry, and I just can’t do it. I don’t have the willpower necessary to be the ‘face’ of a company. If I do continue to work in games it’ll be as an anonymous 1 of 1000 at some s****y corporation, not the most public figure of a single digit sized team.”

While Mr. Maulbeck returns to his company, time will tell if he has truly learned his lesson and is showing maturity as Code Avarice prepare their next game.

[Image Source | Twitter]