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Update, September 12: Kjellberg has now issued a video in response to his use of the slur.
Original story, September 11: Campo Santo will be filing a DMCA takedown notice on PewDiePie’s —– real name Felix Kjellberg — videos about Firewatch following the YouTube star’s latest racist outburst. Sean Vanaman, the co-founder of Firewatch developer Campo Santo, has said that his company will also file DMCA takedowns on any of their games that Kjellberg plays in the future.
‘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,’ Vanaman explained. ‘I am sick of this child getting more and more chances to make money off of what we make.’
Vanaman continued, saying that, ‘He’s worse than a closeted racist: he’s a propagator of despicable garbage that does real damage to the culture around this industry,’. You can’t argue with him on this aspect, Kjellberg’s latest actions are despicable and indefensible. Vanaman was keen to immediately distance Campo Santo from Kjellberg, whilst also acknowledging that the 5.7 million views that Kjellberg’s Firewatch video received benefited the studio, saying, ‘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.’
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— Sean Vanaman (@vanaman) September 10, 2017
It appears that the videos Vanaman refers to have already been removed from Kjellberg’s channel, though whether this was in direct response to a DMCA or preemptively on his part is unknown. Other users are already re-uploading copies of the video.
Kjellberg has previous when it comes to making controversial and outlandish statements, having lost a partnership with Disney earlier this year because antisemitic content featured in some of his videos. In this most recent incident Kjellberg uses the n-word whilst playing PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds in a live stream (that link carries a content warning). His actions are completely and utterly indefensible, and in no way can his casual use of the slur be justified.
Kjellberg has amassed a reported $124 million fortune from commenting on video games and other popular topics in media. He started posting videos in 2010 and in the last seven years has seen his YouTube subscribers increase to over 53 million. In total his videos have been viewed over 14 billion times.
Campo Santo has said that it’ll continue to work with streamers, and to back up this point Vanaman has stated that Campo Santo has sent out 3,000 Firewatch keys for professional and amateur streamers to play to their audiences.
