Day One: Garry's Incident

Confirmed 54,960

Part of a series on YouTube Fair Use Controversy. [View Related Entries]

Overview

Day One: Garry's incident is an open-world survival game developed and published by Wild Games Studio. The game follows Garry Friedman, a pilot who recently lost his wife and daughter, who must survive in the Amazon Rainforest after losing his plane to the eruption of the Yellowstone Caldera.

Online History

On Spetember 19th, Canadian video game developer Wild Games Studio submitted a proposal for Day One: Garry's Incident, a "survival FPS adventure game where your can craft your own weapons and ammunition," to Steam Greenlight. On January 29th, 2013, Wild Games Studio started a Kickstarter project for the game, though it ultimately failed to reach its goal of $50,000 in 30 days. Despite its rocky beginning, the game was approved for release via Steam Greenlight on September 25th, 2013.

Reception

Upon its release, Day One: Garry's Incident was almost immediately met by overwhelmingly negative responses and criticisms from the vide review community for its uninteresting gameplay, poor graphics and controls among other things.

YouTube Takedown Controversy

On October 1st, 2013, YouTube video game critic TotalBiscuit uploaded his review of Day One: Garry's Incident in a video titled "WTF Is… Day One Garry's Incident," blasting the game for its shortcomings in gameplay and animation quality, while advising novice developers to think it through before undertaking an open-world project.

On October 18th, TotalBuscuit was issued a copyright strike and his review of the game was taken down from YouTube due to a complaint from Wild Games Studio claiming that "TotalBiscuit has no right to make advertising revenue with our license." This development was made public by TotalBuscuit in a follow-up video detailing the takedown and his argument against the company's action on October 20th, 2013. YouTube video reached 2 million views in 72 hours.

TotalBiscuit's takedown incident drew much attention from numerous gaming news sites and blogs such as The Escapist, Rock Paper Shotgun and Kotaku. On October 21st, Wild Games Studio issued an apology for requesting the takedown and retracted the copyright claim, resulting in the restoration of TotalBiscuit's video on the following day.