No Rest for the Wicked is an interesting game—a lovely-looking and, by my colleague’s accounts, genuinely promising roguelike. Its biggest obstacle, however, seems to be its project lead and developer CEO Thomas Mahler, who is once again taking to social media to get into fights with people (thanks, Gamesradar+).
The person in question is former Blizzard president Mike Ybarra, who left the company late January last year. Both Ybarra and Mahler got into a spat on X during New Years Eve—one which started with Mahler posting the following: “We all know anyone can look good in Diablo 4 or PoE2. Do you really want to show your audience you’ve got skill? Try No Rest for the Wicked.”
Ybarra then proceeded to reply: “Putting down other games for your own games sake doesn’t really work. Let your game stand on its own two feet,” following it up with a reasonable: “I haven’t played in a while, excited to fire it up and check out the progress.”
Here is the part where I, a third party trying to muster up the energy to care about this, cry ‘objection!’ and point out that Ybarra did exactly this December 2024, dunking on Marvel Rivals as an Overwatch clone. In fairness, though, that was over a year ago—and perhaps he’s simply learnt his lesson after being visited by the ghosts of tweeters past, present, and future.
But I digress: What follows is an exhausting slapfight between the former head of a company bought for $68 billion, and the CEO of a studio that really needs to log off for a bit. On New Year’s Eve 2025, Mahler lashed out: “Diablo used to mean something. Diablo 2 was an utter masterpiece and showed the whole world what western developers could do. You OK’d turning Diablo into a MTX slot machine where people can buy horse armor for $65.
“So should we gamers thank you for that or is a little honest critique deserved here? It’s time that executives stop patting themselves on the back after ruining beloved franchises and accept some personal responsibility.”
I’m not here to gas up Diablo 4, or whatever—as a matter of fact, I’ve written about how dumb that horse was before. However, I do want to point out that the horse was priced as, essentially, a tack-on to $65’s worth of premium currency. Still annoying? Yes, but not a $65 horse. Anyway, we all know that D4’s microtransactions aren’t great. Moving on.
Ybarra wrote back: “You can critique other games all you want. But running around putting down Diablo and Path of Exile begging people to play your game is stupid. And that is my point. You know it’s stupid as well. I get you’re desperate at this point, but I’d focus on your game and not D4 and Path.”
I’m not going to pick apart the entire thread with tweezers, but I do feel annoyed at the fact that I am going to have to sit here and say that Ybarra is being almost as reasonable as he can be, here, despite having plenty of wearisome social media takes of his own in the past. I say “almost” because the most reasonable thing is to not start fights on X, but hey, we’re here now.
Ybarra’s sign-off is unfortunately bang on the money: “I’m not here to point fingers, cry, and whine. I don’t have to work anymore. You do. Just like Xbox’s experience in working with you on Ori—all your future partners read this and understand what they are getting involved with … You need to chill and focus on your team and your game.”
As pointed out by contributor Autumn Wright on this very site last year, Mahler’s escapades as the kind of Gamergate-adjacent controversy-farmer who sees enemies in every reflection are a downright shame, because No Rest for the Wicked would otherwise interest me. As it stands, I’m feeling pretty put off.
