the game was an obscure title due to the 3DO format, it gained attention through James Rolfe's coverage of it as part of his Angry Video Game Nerd series in 2009. Plumbers Don't Wear Ties is now widely considered to be one of the worst games of all time. Plumbers Don't Wear Ties received negative attention mainly due to much of the game being presented as a slideshow despite being advertised as a full motion video game (only its introduction was FMV) where it uses mostly still images instead of full motion graphics as well as random, out-of-place color filters. Other criticisms focused on its "surreal" storyline and poor voice acting. It has been also cited as one of the primary reasons for the commercial failure of the 3DO game system. The critical response to the game was overwhelmingly negative. Criticisms focused on the game's voice acting, controls for making a choice, and for using still frame footage instead of full motion video. In giving the game a meager 15% rating, Diego Antico wrote: "It's hard to determine where Plumbers Don't Wear Ties is at its most horrendous. Is it in the pathetic music department? The graphics (or its lack thereof)? The awful gameplay?" Allgame gave the game one star. The site made note of how despite it being advertised as a full motion video, the game was simply a slideshow. Video Games & Computer Entertainment magazine criticized the game for being all just "still pictures of the director's friends acting like goofballs and delivering bad voiceovers", also stating: "Not even the promise of some naked pictures could save this disc from becoming a joke around here. Avoid this one at all costs, it looks like a bad Public Access show and that's the pits." PC Gamer, giving the game a 3%, said that the game was funny for only 30 seconds, calling the game an "irksome and yobbishly executed pseudo-pornographic photo story with the wit and charm of an elephant's arse". PC Format rated the game a 4%, the lowest rating the magazine had ever given to a video game. In 1997 Electronic Gaming Monthly listed it as the fourth worst console video game of all time. PC Gamer dubbed Plumbers Don't Wear Ties a "shallow, hateful waste of a game, [that] may very well be responsible for having killed the 3DO, interactive fiction, and the whale", naming it