Note: this post has foul language.
Infamous indie game developer Phil Fish has stumbled upon a novel tactic for getting attention: insulting people who might (and probably now won’t) buy his game Fez.
Fish was celebrating the rise of his puzzle-platform game on Steam. The release came a full year after the release on Xbox Live Arcade, where the game sold more than 200,000 units despite Fish’s history of generating Internet storms with his controversial remarks.
Then he reacted strongly to those who expressed disappointment that the $10 game was being discounted only one dollar. So Fish tweeted:
if 9$ really is too much for you then please, do me a favor, just steal it and shut the fuck up about it.
— PHIL FISH (@PHIL_FISH) April 20, 2013
Things went downhill from there. Haters got hold of the comments on Reddit and the Fish-hating comments spun out of control. He then said he was changing the game’s price on Steam to $90. Fish egged them on, encouraging fans to pirate his game. A post on Reddit criticizing Fish has drawn more than 750 comments so far.
Fans (or haters) love tweaking Fish too. A couple of weeks ago, Fish tweeted he was tired of hearing about things reproduced in Minecraft. Then someone built a replica of his tweet in Minecraft.
Fish was profiled in an award-winning documentary, Indie Game: The Movie, and he managed to entangle himself in an Internet firestorm when he used foul language to insult Japanese game developers for failing to produce good games. He was accused of racism and caused a stir
Fish’s real name is Phillipe Poisson, and he is a French-Canadian game developer at Polytron.