If you are wondering why the hash tag "boycottborderlands3" is currently trending on Twitter right now. Well, it's a rather long story.
It all starts with a Youtuber - SupMatto.
SupMatto is a Borderlands YouTuber who has been covering the game for 7 years now. He has also been hyping up the newest game, Borderlands 3, which is scheduled to release later this year.
On April 29th the official Borderlands YouTube channel posted a reveal of the Twitch.tv extension leading into the game play reveal. Along with this, the testing accounts were also revealed. Testing accounts are basically developer accounts who will be playing the game. Since they're showing this on Twitch, these testers were also streaming to the platform. SupMatto and other Borderlands streamers and Youtubers followed the dots which lead to the developers stream.
Since they were private streams, he couldn't view them. However, if you follow a stream, you are alerted to when it goes live and can see them streaming in a little thumbnail that appears. He started collecting information based on what he saw in the thumbnails and reported it to his fans.
And so it begins.
Fast forward to July 25th. SupMatto was at his home when two private investigators contacted him. They claimed they were working for Take-Two Interactive and then preceded to question him about the leaks he reported on and the stream.
I was very tense, as many of you could imagine, having two people in suits you don't know show up to your home,"
He says that they talked to him for about 30 to 40 minutes. He admits that he doesn't really remember the conversation since he was rather tense.
There's more
The following day his YouTube channel received seven copyright strikes. Six of them have been removed as of this writing. Along with that, his Discord server was then taken down for reasons of "involved in selling, promoting or distributing cheats, hacks or cracked accounts" which Matto claims is false. Since then Matto himself has suspended his Twitter account and has effectively "went off the grid".
Yesterday, SupMatto took to his YouTube channel in a video titled "Time To Break The Silence And fill You In".
In the video, he explains everything that has been going on. He also states in the video that he is done. He has uninstalled Borderlands from his system and he is taking a break from Twitter and YouTube to put himself back together and then recommends other Borderland channels that his fans can go to for their fix.
All in all, a young mans life has been turned upside down for simply reporting on a game that he himself was hyped for.
Not the first
This isn't the first time Take-Two Interactive has done this.
Back in 2015 Destructoid reported that Take-Two sent investigators to the house of a GTA Online modder by the name of "FiveM". FiveM created a mod that allowed people to use unofficial GTA Online servers too just play around with online mods and hacks with out fear of being banned from the official servers or hurting anybody's game.
Two years later they sent cease and desist letters to other people who created single-player mods for GTA V.
On top of that, Randy Pitchford, CEO of Gearbox went after news publication "Game Informer" over a statement he made on microtransactions in Borderlands 3.
This developer has a history of doing this to content creators and even journalists. This situation is just the newest thing that these guys have done. And I'm sure it's not going to be the last.
Gearbox and 2K have yet to make any official statement on this. When they do, I will edit this story to include it.
What do you guys think? Is SupMatto just making claims? Does Take-Two have a right to shut down leakers? Does these events change your mind on Borderlands 3? Let us know in the comments below.
As always, this has been James with Game Fix. Game on everybody!
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