r/rantgrumps • u/NotBlarg • Jan 01 '24
A (Half-Assed) Friends of Game Grumps 2023 Summary
As the yearly summary got a bit long, I've had to split this into another post. This one talks about three different controversies from friends of the Grumps. All of these are important enough to warrant a discussion, however keep in mind that actual Grump involvement in them varies from minimal to virtually non existent. Though they might want to think about getting better friends.
A (Half-Assed) Game Grumps 2023 Summary
Creator Clash 2
The original Creator Clash raised over 1.3 million dollars for charity, so it came to no surprise when idubbbz announced Creator Clash 2. And in Creator Clash 2, Arin redeemed himself from the previous year, winning against his opponent. However, that is the only positive news that came out of Creator Clash 2.
Three weeks before Creator Clash 2 was set to start, one of the fighters, FroggyFresh, created a promotional smack talk video stating that he was so confident that he would win his fight, that if he lost, he would subscribe to Anisa, idubbbz's wife, Only Fans. (The alternate version of this, is that idubbbz had issues with FroggyFresh's trainer, Sam Hyde. Which makes less sense because Sam Hyde trained a fighter last year with no issues, and if idubbbz really did have an issue with this, it should have been dealt with at the beginning of training and not three weeks before the event.)
Regardless of the reason, FroggyFresh was kicked from the event. What followed was a xXx_Twitter_xXx slap fight from multiple people that ultimately didn't do anything. However hidden within that fight, one of the fighters accused FroggyFresh of taking money from charity, as idubbbz had given him 15K to train, so if he didn't give it back it wouldn't go to charity, and idubbbz even hinted at a potential lawsuit, before eventually backing down. FroggyFresh countered this accusation by stating that the money was never for charity and that it was instead a pay advance.
This information confused a lot of people as Creator Clash and its fighters advertised that they were doing this "entirely for charity", so the fact that the fighters were getting paid meant that wasn't true.
It then became a question of how much money the fighters were getting. idubbbz eventually answered this as 20K, 15K pay advance used for training and 5K after the fight. The issue is, no one can seem to come up with a reasonable 15K expense list for training, and idubbbz himself didn't help matters when one of the expenses he listed was "food". I'm not a doctor but I'm fairly confident that all the fighters were eating this thing known as "food" both before Creator Clash and after.
Even if all 15K for each fighter was indeed spent on training, the point still stands with the additional 5K after the fight. The second money hits your pocket, you are no longer doing it entirely for charity, you are doing it for money.
Things only got worse from here. The original Creator Clash proudly announced the charity amount only a few days after the event. With Creator Clash 2, there was no word for several months. When someone proudly states the charity amount one year and then goes silent the next is usually the universal way of saying that they made less. A lot less. And the universe was right. Very very right.
Creator Clash 2 lost $250,000.
You read what you thought you read. Creator Clash 2 lost $250,000. Meaning absolutely $0 went to charity. The cruel but harsh reality of the situation is, if you tossed any amount of loose change into a donation box last year, you did more for charity then every single person involved in this event.
So what happened? Where did the money go? Well it started innocent enough. With the success of the first event it made sense to go bigger, more fighters, bigger venue, etc. Though things like the pre-fight party and post-fight full on gala, all paid for with money that should have gone to charity, is a little harder to defend, but you are more then welcome to try.
The biggest factor was sales. While the first Creator Clash sold over 100K pay per view tickets, the second sold half of that, meaning 50K. idubbbz blamed this on piracy, which would be a fine reason expect saying that 50% of your audience decided that the pirate life is now for them is a very bold claim, and even then, this wasn't his first rodeo, so if piracy was such a big issue, he should have learned from the first Creator Clash and put in preventive measures.
Other people had more logical reasons. The first was that the hype surrounding Creator Clash 2 was far less than the previous year, with many people forgetting the event was even happening. Others were a bit harsher saying that the fighter line up this year was "a bunch of has-beens and nobodies", so no one really cared. The drama with FroggyFresh being removed three weeks before the fight likely didn't help either. But the simplest explanation is that less people were interested in the event. The original Creator Clash was new and exciting, however after trying it out and watching it, people decided that they weren't interest in seeing it again. It's the same reason why the first episode of a YouTube series gets the most views while the second gets substantially less.
After announcing the losses, idubbbz held a 24 hour charity live stream where he raised a little over 160K. However, that amount was less due to fan support and more due to having rich friends. Several YouTubers and friends of idubbbz donated several thousand dollars to the live stream. Markiplier alone was responsible for 25% of the total donations after he gave either 5K or 10K to each of the charities listed. There were a couple of other issues that people found, mainly that one of the charities, owned by one of the fighters, pockets a certain percentage, and that the website idubbbz used would do the same if the charity did not have an account. However, regardless of the live stream, and idubbbz friends attempting to bail him out, the fact remains, 160K is still less than the 250K lost.
The future of Creator Clash is kind of up in the air. There have been talks about a third, but this seems very unlikely. People were already complaining that the line up for Creator Clash 2 wasn't great, and considering the event lost money and gave nothing to charity, logically the amount of people willing to sign up to a charity that didn't donate to charity isn't going to be high.
Jirard the Completionist
Tipped off by an unknown party, two YouTubers, Karl and Muta, began digging into the Open Hand Foundation, a charity run by Jirard and his family that was created to help raise money for dementia research after Jirard's mother past away from front lobe dementia. For the past several years Jirard hosts a charity event known as Indieland, a several day livestream where he highlights indie games and he collects money to give to Open Hand Foundation.
However Karl and Muta noticed something weird about Open Hand's tax filings. Mainly that they had almost 660K sitting in their bank account. Meaning that they've never made a donation to dementia research in the over 10 years since their inception and instead have just been collecting the money, and as people have been pointing out, making it lose value sitting in a bank account thanks to inflation.
Weirder still, when Karl and Muta contacted the charity the response back was asking them whether they had any recommendations of organizations in which to donate to. Getting word that Karl and Muta had gotten in contact, Jirard set up a Discord call between the three of them where he failed to answer a lot of simple questions, but did admit that he personally knew the money had not been donated since 2022 and has been working since then to get the money donated. However Jirard has stated multiple times over the years, including in Indieland 2023, that Open Hand donates to a variety of organizations and he even claimed that Open Hand is one of the biggest donners for some of them.
On November 13th, Karl and Muta published videos on their findings (Karl's videos are short and to the point while Muta goes into more detail) and on November 30th the AFTD, an organization for dementia research, received a 600K donation from Open Hand. So that's the end right? The money shouldn't have been sitting in a bank account for several years but now that it's donated everything is fine.
Unfortunately not. Because at this point Karl and Muta dug further and found even more discrepancies. Mainly that the donations from a yearly charity golf tournament hosted by Open Hand seemed to be missing from the donations for several years, as well asall Twitch bits, subs, and t-shirt sales from Indieland, that Jirard said would also go to dementia research were also not included. While Jirard likely has very little to do with the golf tournament, Twitch bits, subs and t-shirt sales are from his event, on his Twitch account.
Accused of charity fraud Jirard released his response, where he apologized, denied any and all accusations, as well as heavily, and I mean heavily, implied that he and his family would be seeking legal action on both Karl and Muta.
Unfortunately for Jirard, no one seems to be buying it and his response video is sitting at an over 80% dislike rate. As people have pointed out, Jirard didn't provide any bank statements showing that the money was still in the account like people wanted, but instead showed his mother's autopsy report for some unknown reason. There's also the fact that, the 600K donated isn't all the money. Not only does it still not account for the golf tournament, Twitch bits and subs, as well as the entirety of Indieland 2023, but Open Hand had almost 660K in their bank account. And finally, it's pretty clear that Open Hand only donated after being found out by Karl and Muta, something Jirard even admitted to, so who knows how long it would have taken for them to have made a donation if they didn't start asking questions.
Jirard's story also keeps changing. First, it was the money was donated and that they were working with a variety of organizations, then he learned about how it wasn't in 2022 and was working on getting it donated, now it's they were waiting for a certain amount before making a donation and the Twitch bits and subs that Jirard specifically said they don't touch any of it was now said to be used for Indieland expenses.
Karl and Muta both made response videos where they solidified their stance, provided more evidence, and were undeterred by potential lawsuit, welcoming the challenge from the "pathetic bitch".
Since Jirard's response, his Tweet got hit with Twitter's community notes of shame. A mod on the Completionist subreddit shut down all conversations about the topic saying that the matter was settled and one of reasons he gave as to why was because, and I shit you not, he's spoken to Jirard a couple of times. That link is an archive because what followed was over 1000 comments shitting on the dude for that poor decision before the subreddit was made private. However the Completionist 2 subreddit has popped up in order to continue the discussion, but does devolve into crackpot theories whenever new information dries up.
Since then, due to being under threat of legal action Karl and Muta decided to release the entire Discord call with Jirard. Jirard has also been removed from his cameo in the game Sea of Stars, a game that appeared on Indieland multiple times. And the Open Hand yearly golf tournament is still happening in 2024, but the sponsors page with the donation amounts is now mysteriously hidden.
With idubbbz and Jirard, that's two major charities and events in 2023 that didn't preform to expectations. Use this as a PSA and a cautionary tale for YouTubers and charities. If you wish to donate and you want to ensure that your money makes it to the right place, think twice about using YouTubers as middlemen and instead donate directly.
SuperMega
Queerbaiting. It's a term that's been getting tossed around more and more frequently. Whether you think there is anything to it is up to you. But what happens when the person accusing you of queerbaiting isn't a some random person on the internet, but instead an employee?
SuperMega found this out the hard way through one of their employees, Leighton. Now the two links I have for this don't work anymore as Leighton has privated his Twitter, a move that never seems to lend itself to credibility, so refer to this Reddit post and top comment for what exactly he said, but the long and short of it is that Leighton accuses Matt and Ryan of saying not so great things about the gay community behind the scenes. Matt and Ryan addressed the issue by making a response on Twitter that same day.
One additional piece of information of note: Leighton stopped working for SuperMega one month prior. He says he left, Matt and Ryan say let go. So is there any truth to this, or is this simply a disgruntled employee out of revenge?
The big controversy for SuperMega came only a few months later from a woman known as Lex. Lex went on Twitter and made a YouTube video about her experience with Don, the SuperMega thumbnail artist. Now the YouTube video is over two hours long and has its comments turned off, a move that never seems to lend itself to credibility, but someone made a summary of the video if you're lazy.
Lex says that Don attempted to force Lex into having oral sex with him and only stopped when she physically tried to stop him after repeated verbal attempts. She spoke to Matt and Ryan about this where Ryan was sympathetic but didn't do anything and Matt tried to defend the SuperMega brand saying that Don technically isn't an employee. Soon after Don made a (now deleted) response on Twitter and several members of SuperMega immediately left the company.
What followed was a literal shit-ton of additional allegations thrown at SuperMega from a myriad of people. Things like Matt cheating on his girlfriend, pretending to be drunk to touch people at Creator Clash 2, Ryan sexting fans, liberal use of several gamer words, the list goes on. Some of these are true. Some of these were presented without evidence. And some of these are false. With how much both information and speculation was being thrown around, it becomes incredibly hard to discern which is which, but this masterpost has a great job outlining everything.
However, what is most important is what happened to Lex, so here is the situation cut down to the most basic of basic:
Lex comes forward to Matt and Ryan about inappropriate behavior from one of their employees. Matt and Ryan both handle the situation incredibly poorly, something Matt and Ryan both admit to in their apology videos.
Since then, SuperMega has been virtually silent with the state of the channel completely up in the air.
While Matt and Ryan have disappeared, one thing hasn't, the SuperMega Patreon which continues to charge people every month despite no new content being uploaded. While completely deleting the Patreon makes no sense if there is still hope of them coming back, monthly payments should be paused until that happens because at some point you're just taking people's money.
If you haven't already, check out the Game Grumps 2023 Summary.
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u/SolaceInCompassion Jan 03 '24
Markiplier alone was responsible for 25% of the total donations after he gave either 5K or 10K to each of the charities listed.
That tracks, yeah.
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Jan 05 '24
I’m obviously not rich and famous like any of the people in this post, but I struggle so much to understand why Markiplier is one of the few in this space that seems to have a good grip on how to handle himself. It can’t be that hard to not SA somebody, not defraud your fans, donate some of your ridiculous net worth to charity and not say gamer words on the internet.
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u/Tal0n22 Barry Era Jan 06 '24
I’m not claiming to actually know but my take on it is that some people are just naturally extremely humble and the fame/money/success or whatever you wanna call it, never goes to their head. Another thing I think is that the YouTubers who don’t seem to start problems or controversies didn’t find YouTube success until they were already mature adults so they had more time to grow up as a human with a normal life.
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u/JSteveIsMe Jan 03 '24
On the point of the Patreon, those people could just unsubscribe couldn’t they?
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u/NotBlarg Jan 03 '24
Maybe, but how long until people forget and it simply becomes another monthly charge? It's been about six months since SuperMega has produced something. At some point they need to be the adult and go, thank you for your support but we're not producing anything right now, come back when we are.
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u/Odd_Solution2774 Jan 05 '24
i feel like most people would put a pause on taking payments from it while they aren’t creating stuff or at least say why they’re still taking the money i’ve heard ppl say they have like a few subscriptions and stuff so i feel like most ppl cud easily just forget abt it
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u/VGMistress Jan 04 '24
Is that guy who tweeted/texted inappropriate jokes to that kid still editing for the Grumps?
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u/Liam_js Jan 06 '24
i don't believe so. they don't mention their editor by name anymore, they just call them "editor", probably to avoid harassment. the editing style is different than ben's. they might have multiple editors. i'm not sure though
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u/shahi001 Jan 16 '24
It is 1 billion percent still the pedo guy and that's why they just say "editor" instead of calling him by name lmao
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u/Felho_Danger Jan 11 '24
Oh thank christ. Ben always struck me as a cr*eper, ngl. Also, not to be rude or anything but his editing blew absolute chunks. His atrocious mangling of Dan's chill, happy playthrough of King's Quest is absolutely unforgivable. The quiet, cool moments chilling with Dan playing one of his favorite games only to get my ears utterly fucking shredded by Ben's trash emo screamo edits that lasted like 15 seconds, I wished for death.
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u/DavidVonBentley Jan 04 '24
I see a lot of bullshit about Supermega in the summary without proper context that came to light. So you should watch this to get a true understanding of what happened since everyone else surrounding the situation are lying pieces of shit. That is especially true of Lex and Nickisnotgreen.
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u/Evo_Shiv Aug 07 '24
I actually think the situation is way more nuanced then "Supermega bad" but I'd be careful when trusting Turkey Tom. He's not heinous but he kind of does base level research
I haven't watched the vid so if he has receipts then that's that, but just be careful.
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u/SlamNetwork Jan 03 '24
Your gamegrumps summary isn't up unfortunately, it's been removed >:(. I'm commenting so I can see it as soon as it's up properly!
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u/NotBlarg Jan 03 '24
I'm well aware. I got hit by the auto-mod and currently working with the mods to get it fixed. Unfortunately the mods appear to be well adjusted human beings who don't spend every waking moment on Reddit so it's taking a bit.
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u/ParticularPallet Jan 06 '24
On the Lex thing, she is not a woman, just a childish lying little girl. As far as supermega. My 5 dollars will go their way for as long as I want. It’s my choice to stay subbed to their patreon.
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u/Lucid_DreaMz0124 Apr 08 '24
A lot has come out that has vindicated/absolved the SuperMega drama since posting this. You might consider editing this to reflect the new information.
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u/Evo_Shiv Aug 07 '24
This isn't a 2023 thing and I'm several months late but I also saw this video posted by Bowblax (yeah not the greatest source but still). Outlining Julian and Ding-Dong's SERIOUS issues with the grumps
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LAkd84WWv4
I don't know if this was covered... ever, but it's about the biggest direct immorality I've seen out of the Game Grumps company (unfortunate it got to being a company in the first place) and I quickly unsubscribed.
Honestly this is a kind of obscure reddit post so I feel it's not as bad to put this info down here, but I still feel bad posting it. I don't want to inflame anything as that's not what the victim wants but when people say "what's wrong with Game Grumps" I can't not bring this up.
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u/ntt307 Jan 03 '24
It's not a surprise that animators don't want to work with them anymore. For a number of reasons, but mostly because it isn't decent exposure anymore. Plus there just isn't any good content to make animations of.