Phil Fish quits development, cancels Fez II

Polytron's Phil Fish has quit the games industry, cancelling the development of Fez II in the process.

Fish announced his decision through various channels on Sunday. He gave no specific reason for the move.

A statement published on the official Polytron website 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."

While Fish claims that his departure is the culmination of a, "long, bloody campaign," it is believed that a recent Game Trailers video may have been the final straw.

In an episode of the GT web series Invisible Walls, Marcus Beer called out Phil Fish and Jonathan Blow for refusing to offer comment to Game Informer on rumours about Microsoft's decision to allow self-publishing on Xbox One. Beer called both Fish and Blow "hispter assholes" and "tosspots" for their lack of communication with the press, saying, "You should be grateful that these guys still consider what you say to be something of use."

Fish subsequently took to Twitter to provide more context for his decision. "To be clear, I'm not cancelling Fez II because some boorish fuck said something stupid," he said. "I'm doing it to get out of games.

"And I'm getting out of games because I choose not to put up with this abuse any more."

For his part, Jonathan Blow has defended the refusal to give Game Informer comment on the grounds of a lack of concrete facts about Microsoft's self-publishing strategy. At the time, the rumour was "unfounded," and Blow was reluctant to add "information-free commentary."

Blow has also admitted an understanding for Fish's position. "It is really hard to make independent games," he said in a tweet. "It is even harder when your audience makes you hate them.

"I have been tempted to quit game development several times. There are a lot of reasons to quit."

Fish has been the focus of criticism from the media on a number of occasions, the most prominent of which were his decision to not patch a bug on the XBLA version of Fez, and his blunt comments about the state of contemporary Japanese games.

Thanks, Eurogamer.