A member of the development team at The Division 2 has attacked the well-known YouTuber PewDiePie. They publicly criticized him on Twitter and faced the wrath of fans for it. Some even called for a boycott of The Division 2. But Ubisoft is standing protectively behind the developer.
Who is it about? Dianna Lora is an employee at Ubisoft Massive, the studio responsible for The Division 1 and 2. However, she is not making headlines because of her work as a developer on The Division 2, but rather because of Twitter.
There, she criticized the well-known YouTuber PewDiePie for promoting a channel that is considered anti-Semitic.
The anger of PewDiePie’s fans did not take long to manifest, and in the meantime, she was allegedly even fired.
Developer demands: Industry should drop PewDiePie
Why does she have a problem with PewDiePie? The catalyst was a shoutout from PewDiePie. He promoted a smaller YouTube channel that allegedly published anti-Semitic content.
The Verge magazine reported on this as well. The channel is E;R, or EsemicolonR. According to The Verge, this channel often publishes “anti-Semitic, sexist, and homophobic content.”
According to The Verge, E;R gained over 15,000 new subscribers in no time due to the shoutout.
What did the developer write in her Twitter post? Her Twitter account has since been set to private, and the post can no longer be found. According to Gamerant.com the developer called on game developers to put an end to PewDiePie’s antics. One should no longer collaborate with him.
In English, she used phrases like “end this dude” and “cut ties with him”.
This is how PewDiePie’s fans reacted: Some fans actually interpreted the wording as a call for murder against their favorite, or at least wanted to understand it that way. Some are now calling for a boycott of The Division 2 and all titles from Ubisoft in general.
Why is the fans’ reaction problematic for Ubisoft? Since PewDiePie is one of the largest YouTubers in the world, his reach is enormous. Thus, the extent of the reactions also plays a role for the publisher Ubisoft.
If YouTubers like PewDiePie can send 15,000 users to a channel with a simple shoutout, how many potential customers are likely to be lost due to the boycott if it is truly declared against a title like The Division 2?
Currently, PewDiePie has 77 million subscribers, by the way. Such a large reach could become a problem for any game developer.
Quickly, the rumor spread that Dianna Lora may have even been fired after the incident. ArenaNet reacted similarly, when a developer from Guild Wars 2 angered the community through tweets.
Rumor proves to be untrue, Ubisoft stands by the developer
Dianna Lora was not fired for the Twitter post. The rumor persisted for several days, but Ubisoft has since given a statement to segmentnext.com regarding this matter.
This is what Ubisoft says about the matter:
We respect and support our employees’ right to express their opinions on issues within our industry. This is an internal matter and we will not comment further.
It is noticeable that all information related to Ubisoft has disappeared from the developer’s Twitter account.
PewDiePie reacts – takes video with shoutout offline
What does PewDiePie himself say about the topic? Initially, he took the video with the shoutout offline and released a new version. In this, he apologized for the shoutout. He was not aware that E;R published so many controversial contents.
He simply liked the video about Death Note. He will continue to do shoutouts for smaller channels, but will be more conscious of his responsibilities in the future.
In general, it shows that large YouTubers and streamers often have issues with similar situations. Previously, Fortnite streamer Ninja was one of them. He is now more politically correct than before.
Regardless, PewDiePie definitely has very dedicated fans.
This is also evident in GTA 5, where hackers online advertised for him, making sure he stays No. 1 on YouTube.
