Stadia Creative Director Lampooned on Twitter for Bad Take

Social media is the ideal place to let your voice be heard. Everyone is opinionated and some choose to express themselves on sites like Facebook, Twitter, and more. When someone garners a lot of followers, their voice can be seen by a wide number of people. If one were to make a controversial statement, that gets broadcasted to hundreds, thousands, even millions. One unpopular opinion can be expected to be met with an unreal amount of distaste.

In the case of Google Stadia’s Creative Director, Alex Hutchinson, he decided to dote on the recent Twitch DMCA bans and added: “The real truth is the streamers should be paying the developers and publishers of the games they stream. They should be buying a license like any real business and paying for the content they use.” Alex’s approach involves the idea of revenue-sharing, implying that watching a video game stream is immoral.

This was met with widespread negative fervor. This far-reaching idea has commenters drawing parallels, such as “I do food reviews on my YouTube channel. should i pay licensing fees to shake shack for reviewing their burger for millions of views after i pay at the counter?” and “Gaming companies get free marketing from creators and creators get a medium to create content on. It’s completely symbiotic. There’s a reason “Support-A-Creator” programs are becoming common practice to keep the content creators loyal to a game.”

The aftermath of this opinion has led to a representative from Google making a statement: “The recent tweets by Alex Hutchinson, creative director at the Montreal Studio of Stadia Games and Entertainment, do not reflect those of Stadia, YouTube or Google.” This is typically disclosed in public profiles but warranted a public statement based on how many people saw/disagreed with the tweet. With Stadia’s already-rough reputation, this debacle isn’t going to do it many favors.