PewDiePie responds to YouTube promotion case saying he did 'nothing wrong'

PewDiePie has responded to claims that Warner Bros paid YouTubers thousands to give a video game positive reviews.

The entertainment company, which makes Shadow of Mordor, reached a settlement earlier this week with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in America after they were accused of hiding the payments from regular users.

But PewDiePie says he's done nothing wrong.

"A lot of YouTubers were involved in this sponsorship," he said in a video.

"But since my name is the biggest YouTuber, my name is the only one that pops up. Basically what happened was that we weren't required to disclose.

"I still did it. Some other YouTubers actually didn't disclose."

Watch PewDiePie's response to the FTC complaint.

Warning: Third party content may contain ads

The FTC said that Warner Bros had deceived customers by paying YouTubers to promote Shadow of Mordor without admitting it.

The company's now banned from hiding similar deals in the future and from pretending sponsored videos are the work of independent producers.

The FTC said many YouTubers were told to put their disclosures in the description box below their video, which means it disappeared when embedded on other sites.

PewDiePie admits he could have made his more prominent but says the game came out before proper rules were introduced in 2015.

"All of these news articles are using me as a clickbait, putting my name to shame, when I didn't even do anything wrong," he says.

"Back then [before 2015], YouTube paid promotion was a bit of a grey area, nevertheless I still disclaimed it.

"Today, I make a verbal mention before the video begins, and the top line of the description mentions it as well."

According to the FTC, Warner Bros also gave YouTubers a free, advance-release version of the game and told them how to promote it.

The videos earned more than 5.5 million views for Warner Bros with PewDiePie's subscribers accounting for 3.7 million of them.

In 2014 the online gaming magazine Gamasutra found that out of more than 40 YouTubers with more than 5,000 subscribers, a quarter had taken money to produce sponsored content.

Earlier this year Trevor 'TmarTn' Martin and Tom 'ProSyndicate' Cassell were criticised after it was revealed they owned a gambling site that they'd advertised in several videos.

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