Phil Fish Cancels Fez II After Heated Twitter Argument

Bad news if you loved the indie game Fez and were anxiously awaiting the sequel, Fez II. It looks like after a heated argument on Twitter, developer Phil Fish canceled the game. He’s confirmed the cancellation to both Polygon and Joystiq, and the game’s publisher Polytron tweeted that the game is canceled as well. So what happened?

When news broke that indie developers would be able to publish games for the Xbox One, and even develop the games on the system itself, games journalists turned to indie developers for comment. When they asked Fish for comment, he refused.

Marcus “AnnoyedGamer” Beer took issue with what he thought was a snub to journalists on Fish’s part. Beer called Fish a slew of insulting names on the GameTrailers show Invisible Walls, and demanded the press ignore Fish when he releases a new game. Beer also made reference to Indie Game: The Movie, which outlined Fish’s struggles to get Fez made. It’s also very clear in the video that Beer doesn’t like Fish. Take a look for yourself.

Fish later claimed on Twitter, “I wasn’t snubbing journalist. I was waiting for the actual news to come out.” I assume he’s talking about an official announcement from Microsoft regarding indie publishing and development. Fish has since locked his Twitter account, but Gamefront has screenshots of the tirade.

The fray ended with Fish writing on the Polytron site:

FEZ II is cancelled.
i am done.
i take the money and i run.
this is as much as i can stomach.
this is isn’t the result of any one thing, but the end of a long, bloody campaign.

you win.

I’m not up on the indie game development scene to know anything about Beer or Fish (sounds delicious) outside of what I’ve seen from this story, but it’s hard to tell which of the two is being more childish.

(via The Verge, Polytron, and GamefrontIndieCade, image via IndieCade)

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