Whether you hate him or love him, Phil Fish always knows how to make an entrance.

Polytron has announced that FEZ will be released on Steam with pre-orders starting April 22^nd. Those who pre-ordered would get 10% off of the original purchase price of $9.99.

People flooded the comment section, whining about how $1 off a $10 game wasn’t enough! (Seriously.)

In Phil Fish fashion, he took to Twitter to combat the comments.

It didn’t start off so badly, but then this happened:

Yes, he called his customers “fucking ingrates.” After that, PR completely derailed from there.

I think I have to partially agree with Phil on this. Gamers have always had a serious problem with entitlement issues. Phil spent years working on this game, and he has a right to earn money. $10 isn’t that much, and every cent counts for indie developers.

With that being said, Phil could have handled the situation better. Maybe calmly and professionally explaining the problem or, even better yet, ignoring the comments. Instead, Phil had a temper tantrum over a couple of brats with a keyboard, basically putting himself on their level.

Phil needs to take a page out of Shigeru Miyamoto’s book. Back when Wind Waker’s art direction was announced, people flooded forums, crying that the game was too childish. What was Miyamoto’s response? “Just play the game and see.” Once the demo was released and everyone saw how great it was, people immediately shut up.

I’m sure Miyamoto complained to his friends, family, and co-workers about people’s comments, but he let his game do the talking, not his mouth.

Either way, Phil Fish just stacked a whole bunch of negative publicity for himself, and it’s FEZ that suffers. People are calling for a boycott of his game, and it dropped on Steam’s top sellers list.

FEZ is a great and innovative game, and we need more talented developers in our ever-growing field so we don’t stagnate.

FEZ is still taking pre-orders on Steam, and will be released on May 1^st.