Whilst the title of this article may seem a tad over the top and abruptly unfounded, I can assure you that it is not. YouTube, well a large portion of YouTube is ruing the very essence of horror gaming.

If you scream, they will come.

What is the biggest thing in Let’s Playing culture at the moment? Horror games! Well, they are not horror games but for the sake of this article we’ll call them that. A great and recent example is Five Nights at Freddie’s. Markipkier, Jack Septic Eye, Pewdiepie and most of the other large YouTubers are all milking the absolute hell out of this game and that has lead to the creation of a countless number of fan created (in the worst kinds of ways) copycat titles.

Featured above, an example of how common this is becoming.

Now, upon seeing this, most, if not all of these YouTubers fan-bases all have the same idea. Why can’t we do that? We’ll be famous! Do these kids (and I am sorry but they are mostly untalented kids) know how to develop video games? Do they understand what plagiarism is? No of course they don’t but they are following a fad, and that is what this article is about. Fads, that is all Five Nights at Freddie’s is, and something else will replace it soon enough. Let us not forget Slender, or Amnesia the Dark Descent.

The problem with these fads is that not only that are they now starting to outgrow themselves at an increasing rate but that they are disillusioning young, highly impressionable gamers into believing that plagiarism and the blatant theft of protected content is alright and safe to do. That is without even bothering to delve into the fact that they (the kids and the YouTubers) are ruining the indie gaming community by obscuring great titles from the public’s eye with an overwhelming tsunami of utter rubbish.

This is only going to get worse, and the question is, where does it stop? How far will this trend go before the Indie community consists of nothing but copy-pasted games and YouTube culture attention grabbers?

Please let me know what you guys think? :)