A YouTuber yesterday said he decided to back out of a sponsorship deal with a Chinese mobile game company, after it demanded he take down a comment defending Taiwan’s sovereignty.
User Davie504, real name Davide Biale from Italy, has 13.6 million followers on YouTube, where he posts content playing bass and guitar.
Five years ago, the company “tried to silence me like they were running a covert government operation,” he said in a video posted yesterday.
Photo: screen grab from YouTube
The original YouTube comment read: “Taiwan IS a country, noobs.”
Biale stayed in Taiwan during the COVID-19 pandemic, and his wife is Taiwanese.
Five years ago, the unnamed mobile game company offered him US$60,000 for a 60-second shoutout video and an extra US$15,000 to be reimbursed for giveaways of bass guitars, totaling US$75,000 in compensation, Biale said.
He said he spent US$10,000 on buying bass guitars to gift to fans.
After the company approved the video and signed the contract, they contacted him and asked him to delete the Taiwan comment, or they would cancel the entire sponsorship, including the giveaway reimbursement, he said.
He said he refused to delete the comment, as it is “common knowledge” and he is not a political person.
He instead canceled the sponsorship agreement, published the video without mention of the company, doubled the number of basses in the giveaway and lost the US$10,000 he had already spent, he added.
As a result, he said he lost “the biggest sponsorship offer of my life.”
Biale made the video yesterday in defense of claims he was a “sellout” for accepting sponsorships.
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