Firewatch Dev Tries to Rally Developers Against PewDiePie

Indie Developer and prestigious holder of audience darling Sean Vanaman, the creator of Firewatch, announced today that his studio, Campo Santo, would officially file a copyright strike against Pewdiepie, removing his Firewatch playthrough from the official Pewdiepie youtube channel, in retaliation for the Youtuber's rather careless and tasteless use of the N-word in a stream of Battlegrounds.

Yep. It's this again.

Seems the bigger Felix Kjellberg gets, the less of his old ways he can get away with. You take a glance at PewDiePie's past videos, you'll find he's about as chill with the n-word as he is with Nazi jokes, but when social media exploded with a video of him calling an opponent he killed in Battlegrounds a f@#king n@$$er, it crossed a line for Sean Vanaman who feels PewDiePie's behavior is both reprehensible, and irresponsible for someone with his level of fame and influence.

Sean Vanaman released a series of tweets justifying his response, and I'll just string them all together for you below:

We're filing a DMCA takedown of PewDiePie's Firewatch content and any future Campo Santo games. There is a bit of leeway you have to have with the internet when u wake up every day and make video games. There's also a breaking point. I am sick of this child getting more and more chances to make money off of what we make. He's worse than a closeted racist: he's a propagator of despicable garbage that does real damage to the culture around this industry. I'd urge other developers & will be reaching out to folks much larger than us to cut him off from the content that has made him a millionaire. 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. Lastly: I love streamers. I watch them daily and we sent out over 3000 keys to professional and amateur streamers of FW. Freedom of speech is freedom of prosecution His stream is not commentary, it is ad growth for his brand Our game on his channel =endorsement.

Some strong opinions. I, of course, have never been a fan of PewDiePie, but with due respect for Sean, this isn't really going to amount to much. PewDiePie's fans are fanatic and will defend him to the end, PewDiePie himself has got a bit of an ego problem and if he does apologize it will be half-assed, and finally, while PewDiePie certainly doesn't help the toxicity in gaming culture, he's just a drop in the bucket in the great scheme of things.

Still. It's an interesting little development. Makes me wonder how many more developers will join Sean. I'm not holding my breath, but hey, who doesn't love a bit of drama now and then?