Dev who threatened to kill Gabe Newell returns to his studio

Mike Maulbeck drew the worst possible kind of attention to himself and his game, Paranautical Activity, when he threatened to kill Gabe Newell last month followed a botched launch on Steam.

last month followed a botched launch on Steam. That, naturally, led to the game being dropped from Steam entirely—serious or not, you can't be threatening to murder the Gaben—and shortly thereafter, Maulbeck resigned from Code Avarice, the studio he'd co-founded with Travis Pfenning. But now he's back.

"First off, Mike is back. This is probably not hugely surprising to some of you, but Mike couldn't commit to his decision to leave Code Avarice," the studio revealed last week. "Travis publicly denounced his departure, and in the weeks following his official stepping down Mike had second thoughts. Looking for a new source of income was extremely overwhelming and when it finally came time to put pen to paper, Mike and Travis agreed the best thing to do would be to have Mike return to Code Avarice."

The studio also announced that it's "taking steps to make Code Avarice more about the games and less about the people making them." To that end, an official Code Avarice Twitter accounthas been created (previously, tweets came from either Maulbeck's or Pfenning's personal accounts) and all blog posts will be attributed to the studio, rather than an individual developer. It also confirmed the development of its next project, Spinal Destination, which it described as "Left 4 Dead meets Timesplitters meets Painkiller."

Maulbeck said when he announced his resignation that he hoped it would open the door for Paranautical Activity's return to Steam. Unfortunately for Code Avarice, it's still not there.