Pewdiepie gets DMCA takedown(s) by game devs

[satiricals]

I find it amazing the number of posts supporting "free speech" in threads here, yet when another person exercises that freedom all the sudden it's "I'm offended"



Exactly. Having free speech means people also need to accept the responsibility of being mature enough to allow others to say things that might offend them.

Listening to rap then looking down on Pewdipie for what he said is hypocritical. Like @KingUsher said, black gamers throw the word around liberally. Black culture at large uses it like white people use the word "dude". The two words are 100% interchangeable. Think about how silly it would be to be offended by the word "dude". To asterisk out the word "dude". To claim "dude" as a racist hate crime. Silly, right? So why get offended by what Pewdiepie said?

Am I defending him? Meh. He's a big boy, he can fight his own fights. In all honesty I've never seen a gameplay video of his... all I've ever seen are his video rants. Did he used to be "that funny gamer kid" who's trying to shrug off the stereotype like an ex-mouseketeer, or has he always been this way?

This is asinine. You're acting like people are forming an angry mob and trying to kill pewdiepie.

Part of free speech is being allowed to be critical of people and services in the eye of the public. We can tolerate what Pewdiepie said and still be critical of him. Blasting him a new ******* in the form of text isn't killing him, it isn't taking him off the platform; calm down.

The N word Pewdiepie said, isn't used in black culture like the word dude. You're thinking about "*****"; not the ...er original version (the latter was said). Also, you don't have any merit in speaking on how that word means to black people, their ancestry.

Pewdiepie got dropped from disney for making anti Semitic jokes. He made them several times before an article caught attention of disney that got him dropped.

Pewdiepie got a lot of racks. Maybe he's less grounded to reality and being more of himself & less of the persona. Especially since this was a stream where personas are more relaxed anyway. Seems more plausible and with the flags before this indicate a strong case of being racist or at the very least prejudiced towards black people.

oooooooooooo no I said an opinion against pewdiepie. How dare I not sit here and accept Pewd's racism... even though there's no way Pewd's will feel and be discouraged by my statement. ooooo I'm such a fascist for simply being critical of the #1 youtuber who greatly affects this platform for all of us.

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Reality Check: Being critical doesn't equate to grabbing pitch forks & torches and chasing him off the platform. And if a majority of the platform uses free speech to organize a boycott against him then by god may the free speech rights of the many outweigh the free speech rights of the few & get him off the platform.

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If you keep the scope on the DMCA legal issue then yeah the developer is in the wrong as a blanket permission statement was on his website before, during & after pewdiepie's upload. But pewdiepie doesn't exactly deserve a pat on the back and a hot cocoa. Where's a verbal apology? He didn't say "*****" like a lot of black gamers do or rap lyrics have. He used the old slave term. You can't blame that on rap or black gamers.

 

[Dewmonic Abyss]

I kinda have a contrarian opinion here. I do think this was a slip of the tongue. And I do think a lot of this is being taken out of context. Here's the context. PewDiePie was playing PUB G. PUB G is an incredibly competitive game. And FPS games are naturally very competitive, as well. The player in the game was being an a-hole. PewDiePie is a consistent player of PUB G. He knows the game very well and is passionate about it. In the heat of the moment, a lot of gamers tend to say a lot of vile stuff, whether it be homophobic, racist, or otherwise just disgusting words. I do it, too. Even if the in-game character is male, I could call them a derogatory word towards women. Does that mean I'm sexist? No. That's ridiculous. And another thing to keep in mind, in PewDiePie's niche, which isn't just related to gaming. He's moved on from being a gamer to mostly being a comedian. A lot of people normalize the n word on online media. Look at the comments section. Hell, if you even play PUB G, there's voice chat. People probably say the n word on that a lot, too. Other YouTubers use it for comedic effect. But it was never in racist context. The n word has been so normalized, it's hardly even used in a racist context. And PewDiePie's from Sweden, a very progressive country that abolished slavery in the 1300s. His ancestors had nothing to do with racism. So the n word isn't as big of a deal to them as it is to Americans, who have a negative history with the word.

Here's what I think is going on. This is a witch hunt. PewDiePie has a massive amount of people that politically target him. Traditional media is a big one. YouTube is competition to them, and by him being the biggest YouTuber, traditional media can use him to further their political agenda that YouTube isn't safe for advertisers.

The game developer of Firewatch? He's virtue signaling. This is clearly for monetary gain. At first, you see he's all angry, but the moment he tweets about how much he made from Felix.. It's like the SJW in him faded away.

People need to go easy on him. No content creator really faces the difficulties he faces. He's a comedian. A lot of the jokes on the Internet are offensive. His fan base likes memes. Memes often tend to joke about things traditional media shuns. What do you do? You're a comedian, your jokes are a specific niche. You suddenly can't do your job, because almost everything you do can influence the platform. When something goes bad, people look at his channel. When he screws up, by the domino effect, it effects us all. Anyone else in that position would not do any better. And anyone who knows him has stated that he is a very nice and genuine guy. He has even run contests and stuff and tried to promote other YouTubers, and has even done things for charity. Every YouTuber makes mistakes, but his are amplified. There is so much more stress and pressure for him than any other content creator. Like it or not, he's one of the most qualified to be the face of YouTube. He has been dealing with the media for years, is in contact with YouTube, and has a grown fanbase of 50+ million subscribers, something that has never been done on the platform before. He's smarter than you give him credit for. Because he learned the algorithm. And he played it until he got to number one. And I'd honestly like to see how anyone else would handle going from a normal person just trying to have fun and entertain people to having their mistakes amplified by major news outlets and many other creators across the website.

It's of my opinion that a lot of the hate he's getting is for selfish reasons. For people trying to show off their virtues or advance their political message. That's what this Sean guy is doing. He made a story-based game. And it wasn't a good story. Everyone thought the ending was bad. PewDiePie even criticized the ending (but before that, he complimented almost everything of the game). This was some built up tension that he finally let out. The other game developers aren't really going to take this guy seriously. They still make a massive amount of profits from big YouTubers that promote their games to millions of people. Any game PewDiePie plays will get a massive spark of sales. And now the YouTube community hates this developer, too, regardless if they defended PewDiePie or not. Just some food for thought. This situation was blown out of proportion way more than it should have been.

 

[Lasersgo]

I don't think he's a racist at all, but what he said was WRONG. Can't defend someone using that word. But to call him racist is a bit much.

As for the anti-Semite stuff, he made a whole video explaining the situation and on the back of all the evidence I saw, I have to believe him on that.

If "hate speech" becomes an ACTUAL trend with him, then we need to have a real conversation.

 

[OrbitGuy]

Ok so there's a backstory to how this happened:

Furthermore, we're complicit: I'm sure we've made money off of the 5.7M views that video has and that's something for us to think about."

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Has Pewdiepie just ruined it for everyone? Will gaming companies now stop allowing Youtuber's to use their content? Thoughts?

Gaming companies mostly will not pull the takedown card unless a YouTuber does something to really make them upset, for example MasterOV being told to stop making Clash of Clans videos after he showed people how to use a bug on his video. Or a popular Runescape channel called ReturnOfWilderness who was basically forced out(channel was terminated on copyright grounds) because he made some private server videos and had some other shady content.

They will keep letting most people use their games in content for a few main reasons, which are promotion and increased sales. It's not like they don't get benefits from people making content on their game, most games get a large boost from having a YouTube community and game developers know this. It's like doing promotion for your game without having to pay an employee to do it so as long as there is that mutual benefit I don't think a few isolated issues like this will disrupt that system.

 

[KatyAdelson]

Hmmm..... I think I see a few "sides" to this situation:

• I hope people don't see Pewdiepie as representative of YouTube, because there are plenty of creators who are NOT like this.

• The N word is really offensive to Americans. I don't know if it carries the same weight in the UK or Sweden. I'd imagine that most folks know it's not such a good word to be using, but I can think of at least one "harmless" word even children use in America that I wouldn't say around a British or Aussie person... I have a hard time believing the N word would be in a similar category, but I can understand if it holds less criticism in different countries.

• He's a fluent English speaker, not a native English speaker. I've learned all sorts of terrible words in foreign languages, and it's easy to throw them around if you don't know how large amounts of people perceive them, or know how people perceive you when you use them. I've seen plenty of fluent English speakers use trashy language and slang, but clean things up in their native language....

• He has a huge audience and should be more aware of what he's broadcasting. It's his responsibility to be more selective and careful of what he says online because he has such a large audience....

• A lot of people argue "freedom of speech," but not many people have pointed out that freedom of speech laws vary by country. A lot of countries have freedom of the press and political views, but some get pretty strict about this kind of language. I'm not sure what the UK and/or Sweden laws are with these kinds of situations, but I know British laws are generally pretty strict compared to American laws....

• As far as revoking his license to broadcast playing the game on the Internet, I think the company has every right to do that as long as there was never a signed agreement or direct permission grated via email between the game developer and Pewdiepie. Anyone can have an unofficial license revoked if they do something a company does not like, but I think it would be courteous for the company to give Pewdiepie a chance to remove the video himself before issuing the takedown.

I truly think Pewdiepie has latched onto the "no publicity is bad publicity" mentality. >.>

 

[FleXiNaToR]

Using the 'N' is not Okay,but common people Pwediepie made a mistake.
The 'N' word can be very offensive if you use it in a certain way but
it can also be used like 'Dude' or 'Bro',
I think he should apologize and remove the video(which he already did).
Some people are saying he should get banned which I think is not being realistic
Personally I think Pwediepie will get more views because of this 'Drama'

 

[Devin]

In my opinion, he shouldn't have said the word plenty of other words he could have chosen but no he chose that particular one. I don't care if it was a slip or whatever people that defend him say. This isn't the first time he's been in controversy, It's kinda bad for Youtube cause he's "seen" as the face of gaming on Youtube and it kinda degrades what the rest of the world thinks of Youtube gamers as a whole.

Now about the DMCA thing. I used to think the dude had the right to take down his videos however he shouldn't have to abuse the DMCA system just because he doesn't want his game associated with him that's fair, If I had a game I wouldn't want someone that's had constant scandals associated with my stuff. That's my 2 cents you can agree or disagree that's fine with me.

 

[Reide]

I don't know if it's an aussie thing but people use it here with less meaning. I've even been called it and my primary school nickname was "Ghost". People slip up. The thing that makes me think people need to not attack him over it is because he has apologised and removed the content.

As for the game developer situation I think Felix is in the right. There is proof of the developers allowing people to use their game and monetizing them. If they did remove the game from him I would imagine they would have to from others. Pewdiepie is quite innocent compared to some users on youtube.

 

[offbeatbryce]

What I don't understand is how family guy is allowed to upload their videos on the fox animation channel and they have ads yet none of them seem to be disabled or get taken down and family guy is way more controversial than some popular youtuber.

 

[Reide]

What I don't understand is how family guy is allowed to upload their videos on the fox animation channel and they have ads yet none of them seem to be disabled or get taken down and family guy is way more controversial than some popular youtuber.

It's because Felix, as top youtuber (technically) is the face of youtube. Family guy is a production team where as Pewdiepie is just a guy who can over talk. Wall street journal pressured the ad companies into this move due to content creaters, not due to family guy, a show with a production team. It's easy to blame the little guy. The way I see it Pewdiepie is the victim (sure he has done wrong but he has been thrown under the bus).