The Steam Greenlight process can be a frustrating one for some developers, especially those that manage to secure a publisher after signing up to it, as they won't be able to skip the line thanks to a bit of external support.
That fact ended up costing developer Mike Maulbeck a quarter million dollar deal with Adult Swim, so it's fair to say he's not a massive Valve fan. You can imagine his frustration then, when his game, Paranautical Activity, finally makes its way through the voting engine, that he was a little peeved to find out that Valve was advertising his game as an early access title, despite being a full release.
Unfortunately for Maulbeck though, Valve really didn't understand when he decided to tell the world he planned to kill Valve's head, Gabe Newell on Twitter.
Shortly after that Tweet went out, Maulbeck found his game had been removed from the digital distribution platform in its entirety, leaving him to ponder his future in the industry. Without the ability to sell through Steam, the world's most popular digital games sales platform, it would be unlikely he'd be able to make a living.
Valve's only comment on the matter has been to state that one of its developers sent a death threat to one of its employees, so it had removed the man's game from its system.
Maulbeck seems pretty despondent about the whole thing, but did raise an interesting point, when he said that he hopes if/when he releases another game, that Valve won't have such a monopoly.
Do you guys think Valve has a monopoly on the PC gaming industry and if so, is that a good thing?
