Felix Kjellberg, better known as Pewdiepie, has been at the center of a new “non-disclosure” fiasco. This time the game is Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor , and the issue revolves around a video made by Kjellberg to promote the game, which was sponsored by Warner Bros. Now WB has actually been called out by the FTC for paying our “hundreds to tens of thousands” of dollars to streamers to promote the game without disclosing their sponsorship. Several YouTubers were involved in creating videos and marketing the game, but Pewdiepie is by far the most popular, which means he’s getting all of the negative attention.
Here’s the thing, though. Warner Bros. is actually to blame for the whole mess. It was WB that decided it would secretly shill out tens of thousands of dollars to streamers to promote its new game without making that fact clear to viewers, and it was done before 2015, in a time when YouTube didn’t strictly require the broadcasters themselves to disclose their being sponsored. Pewdiepie, by the way, did disclose his sponsorship in the video description. He wasn’t legally required to do that, and several other YouTubers didn’t, but he did. The bottom line? Get off the man’s nuts, and stop creating sensationalist headlines that make him sound like Trevor Martin. Here’s Pewdiepie himself to give you the lowdown: