Ron Gilbert won’t post about Return to Monkey Island anymore following rude fan comments

Terrible commenters take even more from the internet

Return to Monkey Island was showcased on Tuesday, during the Nintendo Direct Mini showcase. It was an exciting gameplay reveal for the newest entry. But not long after, Monkey Island writer and director Ron Gilbert announced he was shutting down comments on his personal site.

Gilbert’s personal blog Grumpy Gamer has been a repository for his writing, thoughts, and an occasional April Fools’ actual-announcement. Despite all that, after revealing Return to Monkey Island gameplay during the Direct, comments flooded into the blog. Angry, mean ones.

We’re not going to share them here, but suffice to say, I’ve gone back to look at some and they are pretty bad. Most of them complain about the art style before veering off into wild, personal attacks and spiteful rhetoric. In response to how rough things were getting, Gilbert confirmed he’s closing the comments down and going quiet.

“I’m shutting down comments,” Gilbert wrote. “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.”

Dominic Armato, the voice behind Guybrush Threepwood, shared the comment and frustrations on Twitter.

Bang up job, everybody.

(I’ve seen a lot of passionate but polite/polite-adjacent discussion going on, but the comments on Ron’s blog were a total shitshow.) pic.twitter.com/BUBoPdU1fS

— Dominic Armato (@SkilletDoux) June 30, 2022

Not very constructive

While Gilbert is going quiet, the blog is still up. It’s frankly, honestly, very frustrating to see this sort of thing. Disappointment that the art style doesn’t one-to-one match your wildest dreams or rosy nostalgic remembrances is one thing.

But from the Return to Monkey Island comments I saw, some were mixing that with appalling vitriol. As Gilbert writes, play it or don’t, but that doesn’t mean you need to make peoples’ lives miserable in the process. It doesn’t do anything for anybody.

Return to Monkey Island ships off for PC and Nintendo Switch sometime this year.