Disney and YouTube have cut ties with popular personality PewDiePie after he posted several videos with anti-Semitic jokes. The move comes after a report from the Wall Street Journal found that nine of PewDiePie’s videos released in the last six months features anti-Semitic jokes or imagery.
Disney owned Maker Studios collaborated with PewDiePie as part of their Revelmode brand. Revelmode collaborates with several YouTube personalities to produce original video content as well as merchandise, apps and events. In a statement made to Variety a spokesperson confirmed the studio was dropping PewDiePie.
“Although Felix has created a following by being provocative and irreverent, he clearly went too far in this case and the resulting videos are inappropriate. Maker Studios has made the decision to end our affiliation with him going forward.”
While Maker Studios said they are ending their partnership the Revelmode website still links to PewDiePie’s YouTube channel at this time.
YouTube also distanced itself from its biggest star. In a statement yesterday, a YouTube spokesperson said:
“We’ve decided to cancel the release of Scare PewDiePie season two and we’re removing the PewDiePie channel from Google Preferred.”
Scare PewDiePie was produced for YouTube Red, the company’s subscription-based service. Google Preferred packages popular YouTube channels together to offer advertisers access to several popular channels for one price.
PewDiePie, whose real name is Felix Kjellberg, is one of the most popular YouTube, and gaming, personalities with over 53 million subscribers. In a Tumblr statement Kjellberg said that he was trying to point out the absurdity of services like Fiverr. “I was trying to show how crazy the modern world is, specifically some of the services available online. I picked something that seemed absurd to me—That people on Fiverr would say anything for 5 dollars,” reads the statement. Kjellberg is YouTube’s highest earning star with his channel pulling in $15 million in 2016.
