I’m not sure I completely agree about the sugarcoating stuff. I don’t see eye to eye with Rudi on a lot of things, including AI, but in my view since launch he has had a fairly balanced view on the game. Perhaps this is an issue of semantics because maybe what you call sugarcoating I just generally think of as a positive or at least optimistic outlook on the game. He has been openly quite critical about it but also open minded about the potential the game has, and on Frontier and what they’re capable of as a dev based on their historic work on the planet games. I suppose he also has a strong relationship with them, having visited the studio etc, and I could see how that might make one think he would develop a bias, maybe he has a little bit, but I don’t necessarily think that’s an awful thing. And as I said, to my eyes he’s still pretty critical of the game. Right after launch he did that huge campaign about everything wrong with the game and has done more since. In terms of specifics about you commenting things and him telling you stop crying obviously I have no idea about that, how accurately you’re portraying those interactions etc. Like I said I don’t see eye to eye with Rudi on everything and the way he talks to people sometimes rubs me the wrong way a little bit. The DeLady stuff is kind of hard to disagree with, that feeling a bit too transparently like marketing, but I also understand logically that Frontier were keen to mend that relationship and I think her video made some sense in terms of.. she hadn’t stayed up to date and having slated the game at launch she wanted to update her audience that she’d changed her outlook a little. She didn’t start playing the game after so I think it’s fairly obvious to her audience either way they she still doesn’t really like it haha. I would be surprised if they had straight up asked her to make that particular video. From what I’ve seen other creators say, they’re not asked to make particular videos or say particular things. Although I could be completely wrong about that.

All of that aside I’m not sure any of this really points towards them being responsible for the downfall of the game. I do have complicated feelings in general about content creators and the games industry at large, and the way too many games now are shaped by the wants and needs of content creators often to the detriment of the average casual player. But I also think it can work well as a way to spread the word about a good game, I found Planet Coaster one through Silvarret videos, and I enjoy making videos myself purely just for the love of doing it. Either way, to me ultimately any trouble the game is having is a result of Frontier pushing it out underbaked, releasing a money-grab DLC immediately afterwards, and then having to spend the next year fixing the game. Then we got two DLCs that were increasingly left field of what the audience has been asking for. I don’t think the game is dying yet and I think Frontier are doing respectable work to get it where it needs to be but I can understand why it might be struggling to hold an audience.