Harassment Means Ron Gilbert Will Stop Talking About Return To Monkey Island On His Blog

Monkey Island creator Ron Gilbert has said he will stop posting about the new game, Return to Monkey Island, in the wake of abuse and harassment leveled at him.

Dominic Armato, who voices Monkey Island character Guybrush Threepwood, shared Gilbert’s message on Twitter. Armato observed that he has seen “passionate but polite/polite-adjacent” discussion about Return to Monkey Island, but noted that the comments on Gilbert’s blog were “a total sh*tshow.”

“I’m shutting down comments,” Gilbert said. “People are just being mean and I’m having to delete personal attack comments. It’s an amazing game and everyone on the team is very proud of it. Play it or don’t play it but don’t ruin it for everyone else. I won’t be posting anymore about the game. The joy of sharing has been driven from me.”

As for Armato, he said in another tweet that spamming Gilbert and the team with negative and unhelpful comments about Return to Monkey Island is not going to help anyone. “Whatever you want Monkey Island to be, I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that making this a chore rather than a joy for the devs is the quickest way to ensure it won’t be anything for anybody,” he said.

Before this, Gilbert spoke about Return to Monkey Island’s new art style, admitting it won’t be for everyone. “Return to Monkey Island may not be the art style you wanted or were expecting but it’s the art style I wanted,” he said in May, via Eurogamer.

For what it’s worth, Gilbert’s website–GrumpyGamer.com and the site for his studio Terrible Toybox–no longer loads. It’s unclear if this is due to an attack, a more extreme measure by Gilbert, or simply a coincidence.

Return to Monkey Island continues the story of The Secret of Monkey Island and Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge, which was released all the way back in 1991. It’s developed by Gilbert’s studio, Terrible Toybox, in partnership with Lucasfilm Games and publisher Devolver Digital. The game is due for release this year on PC and Switch.

Gilbert is joined in designing the game by Dave Grossman, who also led design on The Secret of Monkey Island, and art director is Rex Crowle, of Knights and Bikes and Tearaway fame–and trailers have already revealed a papercraft-esque art style for the game. A new point-and-click adventure-style website for the game has also been launched that’s worth a look.