YouTuber Luke Wild of channel SwitchStars — which focuses primarily on highlighting low-effort, low-quality games to avoid on Switch eShop — has published a video detailing what he believes to be an attack on his channel orchestrated by the publisher Midnight Works.
The Moldovan company is responsible for much of the software Wild has covered in recent years. In the video (see below — please note, it contains swearing), he shows messages he received via Discord tipping him off to a request allegedly sent to Midnight Works staff asking them to submit false reports to YouTube.
Wild details DMs claimed to be from whistleblowing Midnight Works employees warning him of impending action intended to disrupt his channel. The message, when machine translated, appears to be a request sent via the Midnight Works' Slack channel asking employees to randomly select and submit harassment reports on "5-10" of Wild's videos, "1 strike - from your home computer, 1 strike from your phone".
Looking at the backend stats on his channel, Wild surmises that increased activity soon after this message was supposedly sent indicates its legitimacy. A further screenshot he received the following day appears to show the same request, this time with a timestamp and the company's Human Resources manager also displayed as the sender, with the recipients shown to be 239 members of a "team-midnight" Slack group. Midnight Works' website says its team consists of "over 240 individuals".
Unlike copyright claims, which Midnight Works has previously filed (unsuccessfully) against SwitchStars, Wild says that harassment reports are anonymous and he receives no notifications if and when they are submitted.
We've reached out to Midnight Works for comment and will update this article with any response.
We spoke to Wild last year for an article highlighting the proliferation of these types of games on the Switch eShop, examining how and why 'scam' and 'keyword bingo' titles from this company and other seemingly related firms are flooding Nintendo's store.