It hasn’t been a great week for PewDiePie. After all, it’s kinda difficult to be funny after a far-right terrorist murders fifty people while yelling “Subscribe to PewDiePie!” That comes on the back of the popular YouTuber flirting with right-wing demagogues and repeatedly making anti-Semitic slurs and white supremacist references.
Some fans have even stopped giving him the benefit of the doubt, saying: “Paying poor people to hold up a “Death to all Jews” sign, saying the N-word on a stream, promoting Ben Shapiro and the Ralph Retort, and his recent crap? How many times does this need to happen for people to see it?” And now, players have apparently started a petition to ban him from Apex Legends.
The popular battle royale shooter has rocketed in popularity over the last few months, but creator Gabe V claims that PewDiePie shouldn’t be allowed to get in on the fun.
“HE RUINED EVERYTHING HE TOUCHES! keep him away from a great game like Apex Legends. The game has so much more to give before it dies and … pewdiepie playing the game would be a death sentence.”
Admittedly, the petition hasn’t broken any records yet, but it’s a good indicator that some in the gaming community see PewDiePie’s presence and promotion of a title they like as the kiss of death. Fortunately for Apex Legends, PewDiePie doesn’t upload that much content from it to his channel. In fact, as the years have passed, the gaming content has been minimized in favor of videos about him and his wacky racist hijinks.
While it’s unlikely that EA or Respawn would actually ban him from the game purely because fans requested it, it’s plausible that he could have one of those notorious ‘gamer moments’ suffered by so many and accidentally drop a couple of N-bombs live on a stream (or be caught cheating). In that case, this petitioner’s dreams may well come true.