Wargaming threatened SirFoch for criticizing World of Tanks
Wargaming contributor and YouTuber SirFochYou was threatened by Wargaming for criticizing Wargaming's World of Tanks marketing policy and game.
Background
At first, Wargaming EU, a European division of Wargaming, promoted SirFoch, one of the most respected and famous World of Tanks YouTubers, as a community contributor as part of indirect advertising campaign. However, SirFoch often makes rant videos about Wargaming for adding unbalanced premium tanks that lack weak spots, forcing players to use "Premium Ammo", an expensive ammunition that you can buy with high amount of in-game currency or buy it with premium currency. He often uses swear words, as well.
SirFoch's rant reached its climax when he criticized Wargaming for releasing the "Chrysler K" premium tank that he stated that its armor layout is lazy, especially the machine gun ports that are usually known as weak spots of many tanks that didn't include as part of their armor layouts, as well as a weak gun that "forced" players to use premium ammunition.
Wargaming, unable to handle the criticism, later took action on SirFoch's rant by removing his contributor status of SirFoch and threatened to claim a DMCA take down unless SirFoch removed the video on his own. They also stated he would never be able to monetize his YouTube content. SirForch caved into their demands but also posted another video calling them out on it.
Reactions
After Wargaming threatened SirFoch, the World of Tanks community unleashed a massive backlash on Wargaming by boycotting the game for their actions. Jim Sterling, a YouTuber who has plenty of experience with frivolous copyright claims and attempts to silence criticism, quickly got news of the incident and predictably made a video about it.
According to Jim himself, he received a massive amount of e-mails from World of Tanks fanboys asking him not to do the video. In his video, Jim also called out those fanboys and pointed out that the incident isn't about the game, but about a game company abusing DMCAs to silence criticism. He also revealed that Wargaming tried to defend their actions by claiming that SirFoch's rant video was a form of defamation. Jim responded by pointing out that copyright strikes are not about bad publicity and that Wargaming was openly admitting they were abusing it. Additionally, if they really believed that they had a defamation claim, they'd need to sue SirFoch for defamation.
Due to the massive backlash received, Wargaming was forced to retract their actions and apologized to SirFoch.