FEZ 2 Canceled, Fish Leaving Games Industry
Six and a half weeks ago Fez 2 was announced at E3, now the game has been cancelled and creator Phil Fish is leaving the games industry.
“im done. FEZ II is canceled. Goodbye.” Read a tweet by Fish posted on his personal Twitter on Saturday evening. When the tweet was first posted many people didn’t take it seriously, thinking it was just an angry spur of the moment tweet, however soon after the official Polytron account tweeted this message. “It’s with a heavy heart that we announce that FEZ II has been cancelled and is no longer in development. We apologize for the disappointment”
It does appear that Fish is serious about the game being no more, a blog post appeared on the companies official website after the initial tweets which read “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.” Phil Fish has since confirmed the cancellation to Joystiq saying “It’s true”.
Before the cancellation Fish had been involved in a Twitter argument with Marcus “Annoyed Gamer” Beer a producer at GameTrailers who had called Fish a “tosspot” and a “F****** hipster” on the latest episode of Invisible Walls. Fish has insisted that this argument was not the sole reason for the departure from the games industry but it certainly seems to have been the final straw.
The incident with Beer is certainly not the first controversy Phil Fish has been involved with. Fish has for the last few years been one of the most vocal, honest and entertaining people on Twitter and as a result has been the victim of a awful lot of abuse and hate.
Now I am not going to assign blame to any party but Phil Fish is, in my opinion at least, one of the finest indie devs ever, FEZ was one of my favorite games of last year and I personally was very excited to find out what FEZ 2 had in store, it is such a shame that he has in effect been bullied out of the industry.
It remains to be seen what Phil Fish does next, but I truly hope that he returns to the games industry at some point, just so we can bask in his brilliance once again.