The company that brought you Duke Nukem Forever has fired the PR firm that publicly threatened news organizations because it just did not care for the “venom” in some reviews of the long-awaited first person shooter.

Even without the surprise attack from the sort of person hired to put out fires rather than start them it was going to be tough for Redner to manage the message about DNF.

The game was released only this week after a 12-year reign as Wired.com’s Vaporware King. Wired’s reviews were typical of the generally negative reception for DNF: The game, we said, “doesn’t live up to the years of hype” and “shoulda stayed Vaporware.”

Making matter worse, Ad Age reports that the intemperate Twitter rant that cost Redner its biggest client, 2K, was perpetrated by James Redner himself, who quickly realized the error of his ways and “proactively contacted media to discuss the incident and apologize.”

But it was too late.

“In some cases, that alerted them to his error,” Ad Age reports. “Wired then spread the story.”

Actually it was Ars Technica’s gaming editor Ben Kuchera who first reported the story. The veteran reviewer captured a screengrab of the ill-considered tweets, which began with: “Too many went too far with their reviews … we are reviewing who gets games next time and who doesn’t based on today’s venom.”

“Bad scores are fine. Venom filled reviews … that’s completely different,” another tweet read.

Duke Nukem had to be quite the game after becoming a running gag about a decade ago. DNF first appeared in Wired.com’s Vaporware Awards in 1999 and topped the list most years.

Just like Anthony Weiner can’t exactly be outraged over New York tabloid headlines, Redner surely anticipated that a game some had called “Duke Nukem Never” and “Duke Nukem Whenever” would be teased mercilessly when it was finally released.

As Ad Age notes: “Unfortunately, for the time being, the ‘media campaign’ has become more of a story about a botched media-relations campaign, as well as a reminder to cut off all access to Twitter when inflamed.”