Mike Maulbeck vs Valve: Who’s Guilty?

(Disclaimer: The views expressed by Chris Henrikson in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of everyone at We The Nerdy. As is always the case when dealing with controversy, your mileage may vary, and Chris would love to hear your own opinion in the comments)

Yesterday was probably the worst day in game developer Mike Maulbeck’s life. Ironically, it was actually supposed to be the best. As Kotaku reported, Maulbeck’s game, Paranautical Activity, had just left Early Access and was finally released as a full-fledged experience. The game was even showcased on the main page of the store as part of a special Halloween selection, which is basically the highest honor an indie game can receive on Steam. Unfortunately, due to a mistake on Valve’s part, the game was mislabeled as still being in Early Access. In a fit of rage, Maulbeck began a rather vocal Twitter rant, calling Steam “the most incompetent piece of f*cking sh*t” and ultimately concluding by saying the following: “I am going to kill gabe newell. [sic] He is going to die”. Less than 7 hours later, the game was pulled from the Steam store and Maulbeck’s account was suspended permanently – according to Valve’s Doug Lombardi, the company has “ceased relations with the developer after he threatened to kill one of [their] employees”. Currently, Paranautical Activity is available on Desura and the Humble Store, across which it has reportedly sold a mere 12 copies since launch – less than what they were selling a minute on Steam, according to Maulbeck’s Twitter.

As expected, the reactions on the Internet have been… polarizing, to say the least. Some claim that Mike Maulbeck deserves everything he has coming and more, because he was acting completely unprofessionally and had crossed a line that should never be crossed. Others say that Valve is acting high and mighty and has removed the game just because they didn’t like something the creator said on Twitter – I encountered the phrase “We don’t need you, you need us” several times, from both people supporting Valve’s decision and opposing it. And, just like with practically every case of controversy, the truth isn’t exactly black or white. Neither party is guilty, and at the same time, they both are. As such, I find it very hard to take a side, and would prefer to examine this conflict of interests more neutrally, giving the facts as well as my honest opinion in support and opposition of each of the two parties.

First of all, let’s address one of the big questions I’ve seen tossed around – just why is it such a big deal that the game was mislabeled as being in Early Access? After all, Early Access titles still sell thousands of copies, right? Well… Not exactly. Unless you’re a gigantic name with a fanbase in the thousands and lots of YouTube exposure, such as DayZ or Kerbal Space Program, chances are you’re not going to sell a lot of copies on Early Access. If you’re lucky, releasing your game on Early Access might give you some exposure – you can start sending Steam keys to reviewers and YouTube personalities, get some of them to cover your game, and maybe also get yourself some revenue in order to continue development. In any case, the big money doesn’t come until release. Ask yourself this – if you’re browsing the store and you see a game you’ve never heard of branded as being an Early Access title, would you buy it? I know I wouldn’t – to a lot of us, Early Access means unfinished, ripoff, The War Z kind of thing that’s going to barely work and then be abandoned midway through development. When you buy an Early Access game, you take on a monumental risk. When you buy a finished title, you’re purchasing a product ready to be consumed in full. And thus, by mislabeling his game, Valve has cost Maulbeck thousands of dollars in revenue.

And yes, I do believe that it is indeed thousands we are talking about. Keep in mind that the game was featured on the Front Page, which is probably a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for an indie. At any point, at least 5 million people are online on Steam, which means that at least 5 million people saw the front page where the game was showcased. If only 1% of them purchased a copy at the discounted price of $8.49, that’s still over $400 000 in revenue – more than enough to support a talented developer’s next endeavor. And I do believe that the game would have been successful. After all, aside from the fact that it looks very fun to play, it’s also not some little, nameless project – it has been in active development for over 2 years now and even managed to run a successful Kickstarter for $12 000, which is incredibly impressive. The project was backed by almost 900 people, almost all of which have received the Early Access version on Steam. A good number of them would undoubtedly provide the game with even more exposure by Tweeting about it, making videos, telling their friends or even just by playing on Steam. But because of the mislabeling, suddenly all of that potential revenue is gone for good.

Of course – as my fellow WeTheNerdy staff members pointed out – he could have always just contacted Valve and let them know of their error. That would have been the proper, objectively correct way to neutralize the situation. But first of all, we have to consider that Valve aren’t physically capable of responding immediately – anyone who has tried to contact them with a request has probably had to wait for at least a few days before receiving a response. I personally needed to haggle with them for about a week before I could reactivate my account after moving to the UK. And even if we assume that the team handling the requests of developers is acting more quickly than the one in charge of customer support, at the very least this would have taken a few hours, and still would have cost a lot of revenue. Frankly, Mike Maulbeck was completely right to get upset. As a matter of fact, he’s not the only game developer who has publicly been upset about almost the exact same thing. Anyone who has seen Indie Game: The Movie might remember that Edmund McMillen’s Super Meat Boy failed to show up on the Xbox Live Dashboard upon its release, causing the creator to express his outrage publicly. In the film, Phil Fish – the infamous creator of Fez, also threatened to kill his former partner. Regardless, Fez is currently available on Steam, and also on every single major console.

It should go without saying that, even with all of that taken into consideration, Maulbeck’s outburst was anything but professional. After all, things go wrong in the gaming industry all the time – sometimes spectacularly so. Remember when an entire RPG was accidentally erased forever? All I’m saying is that it could always be worse, and one of the qualities of a successful businessman is the ability to keep his cool and attempt to find the optimal solution to any problem that arises. There is no situation I can think of where said solution would ever involve a Twitter rant and death threats. Obviously, Maulbeck is a very talented game developer, but he still has a lot to learn about being a successful entrepreneur. It’s very easy to understand that he wasn’t thinking straight when he began insulting the people who were going to help shoot him to the stars, but unfortunately, that’s not something that could have been easily prevented – in hindsight, it’s very easy to say “Well, he shouldn’t have done that”, but in the spur of the moment, you don’t always listen to what the voice of reason is telling you. Fact of the matter is, Mike Maulbeck simply doesn’t have the necessary qualities to run his own business. After all, some might say that he got off relatively easy – if he had offended somebody that’s bigger and meaner than Valve, he could have been facing a lawsuit or even potential jail time for death threats.

In the last few years, Valve has been trying really hard to make Steam the default platform for indie publishing and PC games in general – even if they claim that they encourage developers to offer their games through other services as well. As such, people often forget that it’s not a platform free of supervision – it’s still a business which is owned and controlled by certain people. These people have the authority to do, for lack of a better expression, whatever they want. Of course, where the line should be drawn in regards to what they’re morally allowed to do is an entirely different question, but the truth is that they’re legally allowed to remove or add content to their online store for any reason they see fit. It’s not unlike a supermarket refusing to ship the product of a company that openly supports the ban of gay marriage – the product may be perfectly fine on its own, but the supermarket is in its legal right to protest the manufacturer’s stance by not selling their items. Both the bread and the knife are in Valve’s hands, and their ban of the product is completely justified.

So, at the end of the day, what are the consequences of this? None, as far as Valve is concerned. They’ve cut 0.00001% of their potential revenue, while also sending a zero tolerance message for death threats – something that the gaming industry definitely needs right now, considering the Brianna Wu scandal. Overall, it’s a pretty nice deal for them. But for Mike Maulbeck, his life as a game designer is basically over – at least in his own words. The product of 2+ years of stress-filled hard work – including a month of the absolute nightmare that is running a Kickstarter campaign – have been thrown down the drain, resulting in a game that will most likely join the masses of recent indie games and be quickly forgotten forever, its biggest achievement being the fact that it was removed from Steam. Ultimately, yet another talented game developer ended up being alienated by the industry he loved so very much, joining the ranks of Phil Fish and Lorne Lanning. And for what? Because he was angry and said something stupid. Once again, it’s hard to pick a side – on one hand, it seems like disproportionate retribution, but on the other, he did cross a certain line and deserves to bear the consequences.

Mr. Maulbeck, if for any reason you are reading this, please remember the following: What’s done is done. As a certain wise monkey once said, the past can hurt, but you can either run from it, or learn from it. I have yet to play Paranautical Activity myself, but I am certainly very interested in it, and from what I’ve seen, you are a talented developer – one might argue, more talented than others who publish on Steam. My advice to you would be to not waste that talent. Because at the end of the day, Steam is just one way of getting your game out to people – maybe the biggest and best way, but certainly not the only one. Don’t forget that the biggest indie game of all time was never on Steam, and probably never will be. In any case, I wish you good luck in your future endeavors, and I do not blame you for losing your cool. After all, we’re only human.