What to Know
One of the worst fears a parent has when their gamer kid plays Minecraft or Roblox (other than the obvious fear of strangers on the internet) is that the kid might spend money on whatever card is connected to the Google or Apple account on the game. And for Mighty Mike Plays, a 9-year-old kid who plays Minecraft, that’s exactly what happened. Allegedly.
The account run by the elementary school kid gamer claims Mike spent more than $100,000 playing Minecraft and that, as a result, he put his father, Dave, into serious debt and even got him in trouble. But now, people aren’t so sure the story is real, and they’ve called out Mighty Mike Plays and his dad on social media.
Mighty Mike Plays claimed he racked up more than $100,000 in credit card debt on his father’s account because of ‘Minecraft.’
According to videos on Mighty Mike Plays’ YouTube channel, Mike spent about $118,000 advertising his Minecraft gaming account. The card on file, though, was allegedly Dave’s company card, and he was reportedly fired for the six figures spent on ads for the game. The story got Mike some widespread attention on social media, and his YouTube channel certainly grew after he had Dave on, as a disembodied voice, to explain to Mike’s viewers what happened.
Dave is heard saying, “I’m Dave, I’m Mike’s dad. Apparently my son has been running some high-budget campaigns on YouTube that I was pretty much unaware of…He’s nine. He’s pretty tech-savvy. So we just thought he was having fun.”
In another video, Dave explains to Mike’s fans that the family created a merch store to earn money to pay back the credit card company. According to Dave in the video, it’s necessary in order to get out of debt after Mike racked up six figures’ worth of ads for his YouTube channel.
“I’m not making this update to guilt anybody into buying a t-shirt,” Dave explains in the video. “I genuinely have no idea what our lives are going to look like a month from now. That’s literally terrifying to say out loud.”
The Mighty Mike Plays drama was called out as fake.
Despite the multiple times that Dave has popped on to share updates about what happened and how his family is dealing with the fallout, other users have called out the entire story for being 100% fake. In a Reddit post about it, a user did some digging and wrote that in an older video, Mike admits that his dad was behind the ads and, therefore, likely did not actually spend close to $120,000.
Someone wrote in the comments, “Gullible idiots really want to believe $118,000 in unauthorized charges would have just sailed through American Express’ fraud detection algorithms, and that a professional marketer would choose an AI merch store to sell $100 tee shirts over a secure and regulated GoFundMe that would have easily raised $118,000 in an hour because of his ‘pride.’ This was always a bullshit hoax designed to defraud the lowest denominator, and it’s working as intended, probably better than he had ever dreamed. I have zero sympathy for the victims who are getting scammed, and I’ll have zero sympathy for the dad if/when he gets charged with fraudulent misrepresentation.”
Mighty Mike Plays also opened a wildly expensive merch shop.
@charliecaruso8 I doubt there was even a kid #fyp ♬ original sound – charlie caruso
Although people are doubting the Mighty Mike Plays story and drama, Dave seems to be sticking to the story. According to another Reddit post, Dave threatened to take legal action against YouTubers who believe he is lying about Mike spending more than $100,000 on his Minecraft channel.
Outside of the continued content on YouTube, Mike also opened a merch store online for Mighty Mike Plays. The store features $67 and $97 T-shirts with Mighty Mike Plays’ YouTube moniker on them, or “118k” on one side, as a clear reference to the credit card debt. It all seems pretty unserious, which might also lend itself to the theory among skeptics that the Mighty Mike Plays story isn’t what it seems.
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