the problem with matpat, in my opinion is well how do i even explain it. Frankly the best way to pinpoint my problem with MatPat is a FNAF theory for the latest game in the series, Sister Location. You know, the game series that ABSOLUTELY MADE HIS DAMN CHANNEL and he spends 5 minutes before tackling the theory at hand criticizing Scott Cawthon on his writing and that he, MatPat, knows better what's canon than Scott Cawthon. He's so overly smug and arrogant.

You guys want to know my problems with MatPat?

This anon pretty much just underlined one of my most major points.

Here’s something so many people don’t seem to get about the field both I and MatPat are in:

Channels like ours, despite how much original material we try to make and inject into our videos, survive completely on the content other people make. We are ‘derivative content channels’–we only get to make videos because other people made something we can discuss, and analyze, and rotate all around to show our audiences all the cool pieces involved in a thing that someone else made.

When it comes to mainstream media products like theatrical films, major console video games, etc., it’s more than okay to complain and talk about their faults and failings; these are professional-grade products that are supposed to be of the highest quality and pedigree, made by veterans and educated professionals in their fields with plenty of money and resources to do the job write and make sure consumers feel good.

When it comes to independent material, like I mostly cover, you’re dealing with someone who was brave enough to try something without all the pedigree, resources, power, and experience of the mainstream field. And often, the independent material is made by someone who did everything themselves.

If you’re making your bread and butter on YouTube covering mainstream stuff, you’re part of a very large group in a very large field of media that extends well beyond YouTube.

If you’re covering indie material and lone creators who are making things with cameras they bought at a local store and computers in their basements after long days of work in their home town, then you’re working with underdogs, and being a parasite to those underdogs instead of a mutualistic symbiote is totally intolerable to me. You don’t go and tear down people who have nothing and are just trying to make their way up, and if you’re gaining something from them, you’d better be giving something in return.

Scott Cawthon’s Five Nights at Freddy’s series has been MatPat’s biggest goldmine, and I’ve seen MatPat turn from being a mutualistic symbiote to hateful parasite while still fully aware that Scott Cawthon is an indie creator whose work made Game Theory thousands and thousands of dollars.

I know YouTube figures, and I can tell you that MatPat’s FNAF videos have certainly made him at least $1,000 each, with earlier entries making at least $3,000 by the time they made 3 million views. It’s not possible that they haven’t.

Has Scott himself become wealthy from his creation? Hell yeah! Does that change the fact that he’s an indie creator who got extremely lucky and does everything himself, and all of his work is the reason MatPat’s been making a disgusting amount of YouTube bucks?

NO.

If you want to see the phrase “Biting the hand that feeds you” in action, look no further than Game Theory. MatPat’s very direction for Five Nights coverage has gone from biting the hand that fed him to actually eating it for the sole purpose of hurting Scott Cawthon while still making money off his work.

I have watched MatPat attack Scott Cawthon, insult Scott Cawthon, tell the man he can’t write his own games correctly, insist that he’s broken his own story because MatPat can’t make sense of something, and generally be a hateful, disrespectful, ungrateful narcissist.



I HAVE SEEN MATPAT MAKE A THEORY VIDEO MONTHS IN ADVANCE OF A GAME BEING RELEASED. Do you think that’s because he GENUINELY figured out a game he hadn’t even seen, or because he knew he’d make LOTS OF MONEY doing it?

And yet MatPat still has the audacity to attack, insult, demean, and devalue a man whose work has personally made him thousands of dollars and many millions of views and subscribers. Not just a man, either, but an indie creator who has done everything himself and devoted so many sleepless nights to making Five Nights at Freddy’s games, doing his best to improve each new installment so it makes us more impressed than before.

Scott Cawthon got lucky, yes, but he’s still the man who was about to quit his dream of being a professional video game developer if ‘Five Nights at Freddy’s,’ a Hail Mary attempt, did not work. He still has run this ship alone and done everything in his power to keep it pure and stay a Scott Cawthon original despite all the success and fame he’s achieved.

Is the man above criticism because of who he is, what he’s been, and what he’s achieved? No, of course not. But should criticism of him and his work be delivered respectfully, in a way that isn’t smug and cruel?

Yes, especially when it’s criticism levied by someone who made thousands of dollars off Scott Cawthon’s work and continues to do so. Instead, MatPat chose to effectively spit in Scott’s face with his platform while reaching into his wallet.

And that’s just one major reason I lost immense respect for him.

