Return to Monkey Island Director Will No Longer Post About the Game Due to Online Abuse

Return to Monkey Island director Ron Gilbert will no longer talk about the game online due to the amount of abuse he has received, particularly about its new art style.

As reported by Video Games Chronicle, Gilbert said on his personal blog (the entirety of which has now been shut down) that "the joy of sharing has been driven from me", and it isn't the first time the developer has been forced to defend the game following fan backlash.

"I’m shutting down comments. People are just being mean and I’m having to delete personal attack comments," Gilbert said. "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."

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

Gilbert and developer Terrible Toybox have received criticism over the game's art style, which fans have criticised for not matching the original games that were released more than 30 years ago.

Gilbert said previously that "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 the point of the games was never to have pixel art but instead to use state-of-the-art tech and art to push the franchise forward, claiming that, even if he'd stuck around to make Monkey Island 3, it wouldn't have looked like the previous games.

The game was first revealed in April and is coming to PC and Nintendo Switch at some point later this year, with other consoles currently unconfirmed. Though it's not especially clear what this means, the game's website declared Return to Monkey Island will be "the exciting conclusion to the Monkey Island series."

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer who occasionally remembers to tweet @thelastdinsdale. He'll talk about The Witcher all day.