Days Gone director screams as his protagonist is'reduced' to a cartoon to promote a'small game.' Astro Bot - Sony's all-star romp with Kratos Aloy and Nathan Drake

Astro Bot is doing well. We're not complaining about it because it's on the PS5, but the few of us that have betrayed their rigs and have access to this forbidden console have only glowing words for it.

John Garvin, the former director of Days Gone, is someone who is not performing well. His former studio shared a cute cartoon of the game's protagonist Deacon Lee St John, or Deek, to celebrate the launch Astro Bot. Both developers are part Sony's PlayStation Studios division. Garvin, who posted through Eurogamer on Twitter, claimed that Deek had been "reduced" to promoting other video games.

When a commenter suggested he "calm Down, My Brotha", Garvin responded with a response that was very passionate: "Haha! I see my character as a cartoon shill, promoting some small games and I'm harsh? Sit down my bro, adults are speaking."

Days Gone is an open world zombie video game that was ported to PC by 2021. We gave it a score of 63 in our Days Gone Review. It is about a biker facing the harsh reality of apocalypse, with a stern face, and who is, as reviewer Andy Kelly said, "mostly angry, monosyllabic."

"I don't even know Astro Bot, and I wish them well. But not at the cost of #Daysgone," writes he, before entering into a Twitter feud with someone named Lil Rizky asking some variation of 'what've you made? Three separate times.

It's certainly a bizarre response. Astro Bot's user and critic reviews are higher than Days Gone, even though I wouldn’t take Metacritic scores at face value. Days Gone is viewed more positively by fans over time, but an 8.5 user rating is still more than respectable. Astro Bot also features characters from games such as God of War, Horizon and Uncharted, which is not bad company. Downright complimentary, even.

This isn't his first time blowing his lid on Twitter. In a tweet (since deleted, to be fair), the former director blamed Days Gone’s reception on "woke critics who couldn't stand a gruff, white biker staring at his date's a**".

I'm sure you don't like having to give up creative control of something you created just because you've left a company. Sony has not done anything wrong in using the characters and properties that it owns. And it's also not like he is the only creative force behind a video game created by an entire team of developers.

It's possible to argue that Astro Bots' entire gimmick -- making a platformer from Sony properties and turning them into cute little funko style robots -- is a bit corporate. But it's no insult to be listed among heavy-hitters such as Uncharted, God of War, and Horizon. I wouldn't engage in public arguments over it.