Valve pulls game from Steam after death threats

Valve has pulled a game from Steam after the game's developer, Mike Maulbeck, tweeted death threats following an admin error that classified his game as Early Access when it had in fact been fully released.

The threats were no doubt born of frustration and not serious, but Valve obviously didn't see the funny side and withdrew the game as soon they were made aware of them.

"ARE YOU F*****G KIDDING ME STEAM? WE JUST RELEASED OUT OF EARLY ACCESS AND THIS IS OUR FRONT PAGE BANNER?" said Maulbeck's first tweet, following his discovery of the error.

That was followed by another: "First they force me to delay the game because I can't release on weekends, now this. Steam is the most incompetent piece of f****** s***," and: "I am so F****** DONE DEALING WITH F****** INCOMPETENT S***s."

The next tweet was the one that caused Valve to react. It has since been removed, but not before it was captured by PlayerAttack : "I am going to kill Gabe Newell. He is going to die."

These messages were followed by more, these carrying a more sombre tone: "Welp. PA no longer on steam. I'm done making videogames now. It sucked while it lasted," he said before adding: "I'm jumping back and forth between killing myself and getting a job at radio shack."

"We have removed the game's sales page and ceased relations with the developer after he threatened to kill one of our employees", a Valve spokesperson succinctly told Kotaku.

"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," Maulbeck told Polygon, "but let's be real. If they took the game off the store, they're fuckin sure about their decision. There's probably nothing to be done."

Maulbeck has since confirmed that the game has sold twelve copies since its removal from Steam, whereas before his blunder the game was selling more than that every minute.

If you're among those that have already purchased the game, which is a mixture of shooter and rogue-like elements, you can still access the game via Steam. Valve has also confirmed that they'll update the game for existing players should an update be made available.