Pewdiepie and 'Bear Simulator' Death
YouTube phenomenon, Pewdiepie, aka Felix Kjelberg, recently found himself amidst a social media tiff with the game developer of the new "Bear Simulator. On his video of the game, he expressed his dissatisfaction with it, saying it was a "PSA of 'Don't Buy This Game It's Not Funny,'" and his followers added in their comments. It is believed in some quarters that the Swedish vlogger seems to have killed the game and put down its developer, John Farjay, in posting the video.
Farjay apparently quit the game after receiving this criticism, despite having received funding for it from backers who are fans of his blog page Kickstarter, where he posts, "Well the game didn't have a great reception, has a stigma against its name and there's plenty of other problems so making any updates or going further is basically a lost cause now. Plus [he's] not skilled enough to make the game better than it currently is or write better updates than previously."
As a social media giant with a following of 34.7 million YouTube subscribers and 5.3 million on Twitter, Pewdiepie is perceived as someone who can make or break certain games, with that many people hanging on his word, which may be why the discouraging response from Farjay is being pinned on him.
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In the video, Pewdiepie was critical of the game's shortcomings, more so because the developer received $100,000 funding from his Kickstarter backers. That being so, he appeared to have expected more from the game.
The YouTube celebrity also tried to get a refund for his purchase and finally closed the video with a finger up gesture directed at the game developer. The video received more than 2.5 million views on YouTube before it was taken down a day after by Pewdiepie.
However, despite negative reviews from others in the industry, the game surprisingly has a "Mostly Positive" reception on Steam, a multi-player platform that distributes games online. Although positive reviews outnumber the negative, at 105 to 30, the dissatisfaction from the negatives have been upped to the front page by helpful ratings, mostly from raves of Kickstarter backers who have also been dissatisfied with the game, showing that Pewdiepie did not have a cornerstone over the negativity that came out.
To note, Pewdiepie took down the video when he learned that the developer had quit. But he put it back up with the re-post saying that he had been sorry to hear the developer had backed out, but that he himself has gone through a lot of criticism online in this time. He encouraged developer Farjay to continue his efforts.
The YouTube celebrity also said on the re-post, "After hearing he stopped developing games in total and gave up on this project, it kind of made me think I should keep the video back up." He added, "Obviously you don't stop making games because of one person's video, and me taking it down made it seem like that was the case to some people."
