author: Michael Kulakowski
Borderlands 3 Publishers Continue Their Crusade Against SupMatto
In response to a video posted by youtuber SupMatto, in which he described an unpleasant meeting with detectives sent to him by 2K Games and Take-Two Interactive, the publishers attacked his channel using the copyright protection system. They were able to block over a hundred clips and streams of the creator.
Take-Two Interactive and 2K Games continue their crusade against youtuber SupMatto, who a few days ago publicly described an attack by the publishers in retaliation for him publishing unofficial information on the upcoming Borderlands. 3. Companies have abused the copyright protection system on YouTube and blocked or deleted more than a hundred videos published by the creator, including most of his streams, as well as many interesting clips and discussions about the Borderlands series. The publishers aimed mainly at the latest and most popular videos from the creator, but the choice of the attacked content in many cases seems to be entirely random. Friends of SupMatto allegedly confirmed that due to this attack he is completely giving up his activity on YouTube. The stress resulting from this situation was supposed to have a strong impact on his health.
The SupMatto affair started at the beginning of this month. Youtuber, which has been operating for several years and has over 100,000 subscribers, ran a channel devoted almost entirely to Borderlands-related content. It included hundreds of videos focusing on details of setting and the characters in the series, as well as tips and streams.
In recent months, SupMatto's channel has grown significantly in popularity thanks to him publishing leaks on Borderlands 3. They came from many sources, often just other youtubers, social networking sites or websites. However, the attention of the game's publishers was drawn by the information that the creator, together with other fans, learned from private developer streams on Twitch. On June 26, the youtuber was visited in his home by a couple of private investigators hired by Take-Two . The emergence of investigators was supposed to be the result of a ten-month investigation into the origin of leaks he published on the web. SupMatto described the meeting with detectives in a video published on August 6. He confessed to some of the accusations made against him and expressed his regret at the whole affair. He also announced that he was taking a break from YouTube for a while.
PR specialists must be getting a headache when they think of Borderlands 3. After many controversial actions and statements by the head of Gearbox Software, Randy Pitchford, as well as the PC exclusivity announcement on Epic Games Store, they now have to extinguish the PR fire caused by the game's publishers.
Shortly after the appearance of the video describing the events of June, Take-Two officially announced that SupMatto's activities violated the company's trade secrets and copyrights, and that the creator's explanations concerning his harmful activity and sources of information published by him were supposed to be incomplete. It is worth noting that despite the months that are said to have been devoted to the case, the publisher was unable to make any formal accusations against the youtuber. So he decided to intimidate him, using for this purpose detectives, and also sending seven warnings about copyright infringement a day after their visit, which have already blocked SupMatto's channel for some time at that point. Most likely under pressure from Take-Two, at the same time Discord also closed the creator's server, which brought together his fan community.
It is worth mentioning that as far as we know, no one from Take-Two or 2K Games has contacted SupMatto before and asked him to remove the leaks. The first persons representing the interests of companies with whom the author had direct contact were the investigators standing at his doorstep. The company did not foresee, however, that the creator would raise so much publicity and it would explode in social media at the worst possible moment, i.e. a month before the launch of Borderlands 3. A part of the angry fans, who intensively shared the story, started to call for a boycott of the title.
Borderlands 3 will debut on September 13 and will be available simultaneously on PCs, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.
