A couple weeks back gaming was in an uproar after Firewatch developer Campo Santo took to Twitter to announce he would be filing DMCA notices against gaming YouTuber PewDiePie's videos that involve Firewatch following the personality dropping a racial slur live on stream. A day passed, people screamed at each other on the internet and PewDiePie took to the web to formally apologize for what he said in what looked like a heartfelt video:
While the dust has more or less settled for PewDiePie, the backlash for Campo Santo has not as online reviews for Firewatch have plummeted in the days following his tweet about the controversy. Since Santo's threat to DMCA the videos, the overall review rating for Firewatch on Steam has dropped from 84% to 45%. Here's an example of one of the recent reviews:
"I don't support the abuse of copyright law to censor things".
It should be noted this behavior isn't advocated by PewDiePie, nor has he condoned any of the backlash that's happening against Firewatch at this time. Just glancing at his Twitter, Santo appears to have gone quiet and has deleted his tweets against PewDiePie.
Do you think the gaming communities response against Firewatch is appropriate? Do you think negative reviews towards a game long after release necessarily hurt sales?
