PewDiePie said he was sickened to be mentioned by the New Zealand shooter.
PewDiePie said he was sickened to be mentioned by the New Zealand shooter.
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PewDiePie’s anti-Semitic jokes show the peril of backing unpredictable influencers

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 2 min

Disney’s Maker Studios and YouTube have severed ties with gaming influencer Felix Kjellberg, known as PewDiePie, after he posted nine videos with anti-Semitic images and jokes.

The moves came after the Wall Street Journal reported that PewDiePie had posted the videos, which were removed but not before they accumulated 23 million views. PewDiePie has more than 53 million subscribers, and he is YouTube’s biggest star.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.