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Schafer: "I need to keep my mouth shut"

Claims comments about Kotick were "an accident" and warns against burning bridges

Tim Schafer has responded to the recent publication of critical comments he made about Activision boss Bobby Kotick.

"That was an accident," explained Schafer in response to a question following his talk at Develop this morning. "I was going to change the title of my talk to 'how to give interviews and remember to check the microphone is off.'

"I need to keep my mouth shut," he said. "It is shocking how you really can't burn bridges in the industry. You start your own company and you don't have to work for that jerky boss any more. Not naming names.

"Then it's like Empire Strikes Back - you walk in the room and "holy shit darth vader's at the table." It's such a small industry, you see the same people over and over again. No-one ever goes away."

However, he refused to explain his comment yesterday, in which he called Kotick a "dick" and accused him of not liking games. "I'm definitely not saying anything about Bobby," he said. "After that Eurogamer thing I realised I'm a little nervous about what I want to say."

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Alec Meer: A 10-year veteran of scribbling about video games, Alec primarily writes for Rock, Paper, Shotgun, but given any opportunity he will escape his keyboard and mouse ghetto to write about any and all formats.