For those who are unaware, Raid: Shadow Legends is a freemium mobile game that's reportedly been downloaded more than 250 million times over the last two years. The game has fairly impressive user scores on both the App Store and the Google Play store, but to many, it is better known for its aggressive marketing tactics.
Given the eye-watering amounts generated by mobile games in recent years, it's perhaps no surprise that publishers are willing to spend big in order to attract new players. Few though seem to be spending as big as Plarium, the publisher behind Raid: Shadow Legends. Anybody who watches a lot of YouTube will know this only too well.
Plarium did at one point try to convince people that they weren't sponsoring YouTubers, although this was quickly walked back following a little public scrutiny. Only Plarium knows just how much has been spent, but given the frequency of the spots and the size of the channels on which they appear, one suspects it's more than a pretty penny. These are just some of the many big YouTubers who have been paid to promote the game over the last few years.
Updated March 14, 2021, by Thomas Bowen: Despite the heavy criticism that many big YouTubers have faced for promoting Raid on their channels, sponsor spots for the game continue to pop up regularly on the platform. While it's possible that there are still a handful of people eager to get their hands on 50,000 silver and a free 'Epic Champion', many viewers are now sick of hearing about the game and are starting to speak out. Whether this will lead to Plarium changing their marketing strategy or more YouTubers refusing their sponsorship deals in the future remains to be seen, but for now, at least, those little bags of silver continue to exchange hands at a somewhat alarming rate.
15 Linus Tech Tips
The Linus Tech Tips channel has only been sponsored by Raid once and it did not go particularly well for them. The video on which the spot appeared garnered thousands of dislikes, with many viewers questioning the decision to accept the sponsorship down in the comments section below.
This prompted a rather lengthy Raid-centric discussion between Linus and Luke in that week's episode of The WAN show. After addressing and recognizing some of the community's criticisms, Linus announced that the company would't be working with Raid again in the immediate future.
14 The Action Lab
The Action Lab will soon be celebrating five full years on YouTube, during which time the channel has amassed more than three million subscribers and over half a billion views. Over this period, James has worked with plenty of sponsors and so it shouldn't bee too surprising to learn that Raid is one of them.
He most recently promoted the game on his 'Punching a Hole Through Solid Steel Frozen With Liquid Nitrogen' video (spoiler alert, he fails to punch through the steel) but has been featuring spots for the game for almost two years now. His viewers don't seem to mind too much though, with very few questioning the deal in the comment sections.
13 Jon Solo
Although he hasn't quite broken through the million subscriber mark just yet, Jon Solo has built a decent following thanks largely to his fantastic Messed Up Origins series. He covers a lot of Disney related content on his channel too, which has also played a big role in his success.
The 26 year old has featured several sponsor spots for Raid in his Messed Up videos, with the first coming in early 2020. Surprisingly, perhaps, none of his viewers seem too bothered by the interruptions, suggesting that they too may have been tempted by the offer of free silver.
12 TomSka
TomSka has featured spots for Raid on a few of his videos now, although unlike some other big channels, there hasn't really been too much push back from his audience. This is partially down to Ridgewell incorporating the ads into sketches rather than just working his way through Plarium's list of talking points as others often do, but the open relationship that he shares with his audience also helps.
In the past, Ridgewell has spoken at great length about brand deals and sponsor spots and how important they are for the channel's survival. With this in mind, it's arguably a lot easier for viewers to just ignore these sixty second interruptions rather than criticizing a young filmmaker who's just trying to keep the lights on at the Turbo Punch office.
11 Orange Juice Gaming
Jimmy Chau plays mobile games on his channel fairly regularly, but Raid: Shadow Legends isn't one of them. That didn't prevent the YouTuber from accepting a deal with Plarium back in 2019 though. He described the game as "spicy" - whatever that means - and suggested that it would "take mobile gaming to the next level".
Since the spot, the size of Chau's channel has almost doubled with total views fast surging past the half a billion mark along the way. The deal didn't seem to cause too much backlash either, although given the size of his channel at the time and that Raid was still in its infancy, this should perhaps come as no surprise.
10 The Angry Video Game Nerd
James Rolfe, or the Angry Video Game Nerd as he's better known to many, is one of the original gaming YouTubers. He's dedicated a big part of his life to documenting some of the worst games ever created and has been on the platform for nearly 15 years.
During that time, he's amassed more than 1.8 billion views and has even released a movie and a couple of video games based on the AVGN character. His spots for Raid have been a little more reserved than one might expect from the character, with him typically taking a more serious approach. Given that he has bills to pay, this is perhaps understandable.
9 JonTron
JonTron is best known for his parodies, reviews and the ech-tremely unique sounds that he makes in his videos. His parakeet, Jacques used to appear regularly on the show although in recent years, has only featured sporadically. This year, the 30 year old celebrated a decade on the platform and has racked up over a billion views during that time.
He's also worked on numerous other projects on the platform including co-creating Game Grumps and has voiced characters in a handful of video games. Several of Jon's videos have been sponsored by Raid, with him typically having some fun while presenting the spots.
8 The Internet Historian
At first glance, the Internet Historian may seem like a strange choice to advertise a mobile game. When considering that his videos average more than 6 million views each though, it starts to make a bit more sense. Having only joined YouTube in 2017, he's fairly new to the platform but has already amassed 2.6 million subscribers.
The Internet Historian typically uses his Shadow Man character for his sponsor spots, which can often yield some less than flattering results. Although they may not provide the best publicity for the sponsors, they're usually pretty funny.
7 Memeulous
Memeulous started out making parodies although now focuses more on commentary and reaction videos. He's best known for his monthly round-up reviews which discuss key events that take place on YouTube, but he also plays games from time to time.
The channel has more than 4 million subscribers and over a billion views - with around 75% of those coming in the last three years. His sponsored spots for Raid are normally fairly generic and typically follow the usual talking points.
6 Caddicarus
With a rather modest 765 thousand subscribers, Caddicarus is one of the smaller channels to have featured sponsored content for Raid. The channel is operated by an English YouTuber by the name of Jim Caddick and he's been making videos about games since 2011. In his nine years on YouTube, his videos have clocked up more than 200 million views.
Jim typically sticks to Raid's talking points during sponsored spots although tries to add his own comedic twist to the proceedings. Interestingly, Jim's younger sister Rosie is also fairly successful on the platform, but hasn't uploaded a video in nearly two years. Unlike here brother, she has never promoted Raid on her channel.
5 Pyrocynical
Pyrocynical is a 23-year-old YouTuber from the UK. His channel has nearly 4.5 million subscribers and more than a billion views. He's best known for his commentary videos that cover a mixture of current affairs and video games. He's been on the platform for more than seven years now and has uploaded more than 600 videos in that time.
Videos on the channel typically receive an average of around 2 million views each, although his MLG Teletubbies video has racked up just under 16 million since going live in 2014. As with all of his videos, Pyro puts a lot of effort into his spots for Raid, making them fairly entertaining. Well, for ads, at least.
4 The King of Random
The King of Random channel was originally started by Grant Thompson, who tragically died in a paramotoring accident last year. Since then, videos have been hosted by a number of different people and have generally struggled to perform as well. The channel has 12.5 million subscribers and, in terms of content, does exactly what it says on the tin.
Their videos are a mixture of science experiments and life hacks and have been viewed more than 3 billion times over the past decade. The channel's spots for Raid are pretty generic and stick rigidly to the talking points provided by the publisher rather than attempting anything too creative or random.
3 Alec Steele
Alec Steele is a British YouTuber who moved out to Montana at the end of 2018. He's a blacksmith by trade and forges a wide range of items and weapons in his videos. His channel has more than 2 million subscribers and, at the time of writing, more than 350 million views.
Although videos about forging may not seem like the best fit for a mobile game, Steele recently created a large two handed sword that was incredibly similar to one of the many weapons found in Raid. He typically goes to a lot of effort to integrate his sponsor spots into his videos so as to make them feel less intrusive and this generally works quite well.
2 TheJWittz
TheJWittz started out as a channel that focused mainly on rare Pokémon cards but has since branched out to cover all things Nintendo. It was created by Joshua Wittenkeller back in 2009 and has accumulated nearly 1.6 million subscribers since then. The channel has more than 350 million video views with a video about banned Pokémon episodes accounting for around 20 million of those.
Joshua has been promoting Raid for some time now with sponsored spots featuring in many of his videos. Unlike some of the other YouTubers who have been sponsored by Raid, Joshua actually seems to play the game himself. While this makes his spots seem a bit less forced, they still generally stick to the same general talking points.
1 MrBeast
MrBeast's 45 million subscribers make him the largest YouTuber that's promoted Raid: Shadow Legends. He's probably best known for his giveaway videos and spending obscene amounts of money. The channel has racked up 7.5 billion views in its lifetime, which works out at just under a billion for each year that it's been active.
With numbers like this, it's easy to see why businesses might be keen to have him talk about their products in his videos. Indeed, his first sponsored spot for Raid has already been viewed more than 27 million times. One shudders just thinking about how much it cost Plarium to secure this sponsorship.