Campo Santo, the developer behind the acclaimed indie narrative adventure Firewatch, is taking quite the verbal beating on Steam right now. Campo Santo co-founder Sean Vanaman recently made headlines by filing a DMCA takedown of PewDiePie‘s Firewatch videos following a livestreaming incident during which PewDiePie lashed out at another player using racial slurs. YouTube honored the request, and PewDiePie fans have been firing back by lighting up Firewatch with negative reviews.
Videos by ComicBook.com
The evidence is pretty damning. In a report from Eurogamer, you can see a chart that very clearly shows the torrent of negative reviews hitting Steam the day after Vanaman tweeted about his takedown request. Since then, the vast majority of reviews for Firewatch have been decidedly negative, and many of the reviewers mention PewDiePie outright in their reviews. These bars tell a very clear story:
If the graph isn’t telling enough, why don’t we take a look at some of the reviews? You can find the Steam listing right here, and if you scroll down to the reviews, you’ll top-to-bottom thumbs down. Some of these reviews are pretty mean-spirited and nasty, so just be warned.
The Reviews
A quick glance at the recent reviews reveals an army of hate-spewing PewDiePie fans that we’re sure the streamer himself would disown if he could. Maybe PewDiePie will read some of these comments and realize what kind of audience he’s attracting to himself with his behavior.
“Attention whore,” reads one helpful and thorough review. Another player left a very positive review, praising the story, visuals, and voice acting, but then concludes, “Only issue is that the dev started filing false DMCA claims against people he doesn’t like. And I REALLY don’t like the implications of that.” “Sean V. (developer) is a butthurt SJW crybaby looking to be offended,” reads another. “Game is enjoyable but the dev has gone all ‘purge the heretics’. Would not recommend giving them any money until they stop damaging the industry.”
Then things get a little less subtle.
“FU ST*PID DEVELOPERS NI**ERS THAT SH!T EVERYWHERE F*KKING WHITE WH()RES WHO SUCK FOR IPHONE CHINESE RET*RDS WHO CONQUER THE WORLD TRASH TALKING BLOGGERS WILLING TO SELL THEIR MOTHER” We’re not sure what these guys are hoping to accomplish here, other than outing their accounts.
This insanity is a direct result of Vanaman not only requesting that his content be removed, but of his suggestion that other developers do the same.
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 milionaire
— Sean Vanaman (@vanaman) September 10, 2017
PewDiePie, for his part, apologized for his initial livestreaming comments and said that he “can’t keep messing up like this.” Very few people bought his apology as genuine. Did you?
