PewDiePie arguing

[LHudson]

Alright detractors. I agree that I think PewdiePie is a content maker I really dislike. I'm sure the guys quite a nice man, heck a couple of people I am friends with make absolute dread in terms of content wise. For this case, I am going to say that giving PewdiePie permission to use the first hour and a half chopped down was probably a wise move for Frictional.

Let's talk about advertising. You have probably seen some some billboards going around advertising Grand Theft Auto V or some other game. The cost of advertising on a billboard that would take 6 sheets to make amounts to £250 for anywhere outside London for one month PER BILLBOARD.

To effectively advertise on a low budget, you would have to spend at least £700,000 on billboard advertising alone. For facebook advertising you can set your budget, but to get to an audience I would say you'd need to budget yourself at least £10,000 per day.

As for television, the cost of a small advertising campaign will equal to about £100,000 PER CHANNEL PER MONTH, and with a massive 607 channels on sky, that means you'd need to spend £3,000,000 to get to half of those channels for one month on that budget.

Additionally, you have to take on the Advertising Standards Authority when advertising on television. From the Halloween trailer, they hit at least this rule.
- 4.3 - References to anyone who is dead must be handled with particular care to avoid causing offence or distress.

The advertisement may also cause a storm of complains from parents or scared and screaming children, calling for the game to be heavily censored or something dumb, and with the Daily Mail, that is something a small business like Frictional or Chinese Room cannot afford to be bombarded with.

And that is just for the United Kingdom, which is (visually) the same size as Florida.

With PewdiePie making this video, it's a win win situation for Frictional. They don't have to spend a massive boat load of money on billboard, facebook, or television advertisements, they don't have to be under the watchful eye of the ASA, and Pewds gets to make money from it. In the UK, it would take about £4,000,000 to advertise in the UK, and it may not grab the audience. With PewdiePie, you reach out to millions of people for free, and all you have to do is give him the demo and say "go nuts with the first hour and half before release day". What kind of marketing department wouldn't want that? Within 17 hours the video has been viewed about 900,000 times, that's gold dust to a marketing department.

You will probably disagree with me and, yeah, I can see where you are coming from. I dislike PewdiePie's content like the next guy, but I am baffled by people calling this the worst move imaginable.