Speaking today at the Reboot Develop conference in Croatia, Rockfish Games' co-founder Michael Schade criticised the way agencies assign influencers to promote their clients' games. When marketing its 3D sci-fi shooter Everspace, Schade and his team reportedly paid up to €5,000 an hour for one professional streamer who was "shit at playing the game."

That's according to Shacknews and VG24/7, which report Schade as saying "only three or five" of the 20 YouTubers and influencers who were paid to play Everspace worked out.

"The rest was OK, or a disaster," says Schade to that end. "Streamers are way more expensive. The most expensive stream, we paid 5,000 (euros) per hour and we had to book him for two hours. Actually his opening line was ‘I have to stop playing Destiny 2 now because I’m on a sponsored stream to play a space game and I don’t like space games’.

"And he played like a complete moron… a fucking moron."

Schade reckons the worst thing that can happen in these situations is somebody with a substantial number of followers being "shit" at their game, VG24/7 reports.

He continues: "I blame the agency. They need to figure it out. Working with agencies and influencers is so new and takes so much time and effort into it. If you pick the right one, it’s fine. Before you make a decision on pricing, I recommend you watch those videos and see if he or she is really good at playing a game. If they’re not good at playing the game we don’t want to have coverage.

"You have to pick very carefully. The next time we work with an influencer we’re going to make sure they are really good at a 3D space game otherwise we’re not going to do this."