If you‘ve spent any significant amount of time in gaming communities on the internet over the past few years, chances are you‘ve encountered the Raid Shadow Legends copypasta. This block of text, originating from an ad for the mobile RPG, has been spammed endlessly across social media comments, Twitch chats, and Reddit threads.
Navi.
But how did a relatively standard (albeit aggressive) sponsorship message transform into a ubiquitous meme? The story of the Raid Shadow Legends copypasta offers a case study in online humor, marketing fatigue, and the unpredictable ways that advertising campaigns can be subverted and repurposed by digital communities.
The Origin of the Copypasta
First, let‘s define our terms. A "copypasta" is a block of text that internet users repeatedly copy and paste, often to troll or make a humorous point. Copypastas can take many forms, from absurdist fiction to angry rants to parody advertisem*nts like the Raid Shadow Legends example.
The Raid copypasta entered widespread circulation in late 2019, a time when it felt impossible to consume gaming content on YouTube or Twitch without encountering a sponsorship message for the mobile game. Seemingly every creator, from PewDiePie to small indie streamers, had a Raid Shadow Legends deal.
Here is the text of the copypasta in its original, unedited form:
"Today‘s video is sponsored by Raid Shadow Legends, one of the biggest mobile role-playing games of 2019 and it‘s totally free! Currently almost 10 million users have joined Raid over the last six months, and it‘s one of the most impressive games in its class with detailed models, environments and smooth 60 frames per second animations! All the champions in the game can be customized with unique gear that changes your strategic buffs and abilities! The dungeon bosses have some ridiculous skills of their own and figuring out the perfect party and strategy to overtake them‘s a lot of fun! Currently with over 300,000 reviews, Raid has almost a perfect score on the Play Store! The community is growing fast and the highly anticipated new faction wars feature is now live, you might even find my squad out there in the arena! It‘s easier to start now than ever with rates program for new players you get a new daily login reward for the first 90 days that you play in the game! So what are you waiting for? Go to the video description, click on the special links and you‘ll get 50,000 silver and a free epic champion as part of the new player program to start your journey! Good luck and I‘ll see you there!"
If this text reads like something generated by a marketing algorithm desperately trying to relate to "the gamers," that‘s because it basically is. The message hits all the standard talking points you would expect from a mobile game ad – touting its "totally free" price, boasting about its large player base and high review scores, and offering "free rewards" for those who download it.
The copypasta was born when savvy viewers noticed that dozens of sponsorships, across multiple channels, used nearly identical scripts, down to specific wording and punctuation. The subreddit r/copypasta, a forum dedicated to sharing and remixing memorable text chunks, became a main hub for people to share sightings of the Raid sponsorship and riff on its contents.
Raid Shadow Legends Marketing by the Numbers
To understand how the Raid copypasta became so well-known, it‘s important to grasp the scale of the game‘s marketing efforts. Raid Shadow Legends, which launched in 2018, is published by Plarium, a mobile game company based in Israel. The RPG is free-to-play and monetized through in-app purchases of items and characters.
While Plarium has not disclosed the specific size of Raid‘s marketing budget, it‘s clear the game has invested heavily in sponsorships with online influencers. Nikita Veselov, the head of influencer marketing at Plarium, told VentureBeat in 2020 that the company had worked with 2500-3000 influencers at that point, an enormous number compared to most mobile game ad campaigns.
Raid sponsorships have appeared in videos from some of the most-subscribed gaming channels on YouTube, including jschlatt (4.06M subscribers), jacksepticeye (28.9M subscribers), and PewDiePie (111M subscribers). TubeBuddy, an analytics service that tracks YouTube sponsorships, found over 8,000 sponsored video integrations for Raid as of March 2023.
This investment seems to have paid off for Plarium. According to data from Sensor Tower, Raid Shadow Legends generated $569 million in revenue between its release and April 2022. The analytics firm found that Raid ranked 8th in global revenue among role-playing games on the App Store and Google Play during that timeframe.
The Memetic Mutation of the Copypasta
As Raid‘s sponsorships became increasingly omnipresent in the gaming community, many viewers started to get fatigued by the repetitive ads. The Raid copypasta offered a way to express this annoyance through parody.
Posting the copypasta verbatim in the comment section of a sponsored video became a way to signal that yes, you too had heard this specific marketing spiel a dozen times before. It was the digital equivalent of an exasperated sigh.
But the spread of the copypasta really took off when people started remixing and mutating it. One popular variant replaced words from the original text with "OwO speak," a cutesy, baby-talk-esque slang often associated with furry culture:
"Today‘s video iws sponsowed by Waid Shadow Wegends, one of teh biggest mobiwe wowe pwaying games of 2019 awnd it‘s totawwy fwee! Cuwwentwy awmost 10 miwwion usews have joined Waid ovew teh wast six months, awnd it‘s one of teh most impwessive games in its cwass wid detaiwed modews, enviwonments awnd smood 60 fwames pew second animations!"
This version strips away the ad‘s attempt at sounding cool and edgy, exposing its basic formulaic structure. The baby-talk rendering suggests that this wall of text trying to relate to hardcore gamers is more akin to a children‘s storybook.
Other spinoffs further played with the idea of Raid sponsorships showing up in increasingly absurd contexts. One variant joked that the game had earned the endorsem*nt of President Obama himself:
"I used to play Fortnite all night. No sleep! But ever since Obama told me to try Raid Shadow Legends for free, I am addicted. This game is a game. It has graphics. It has characters. Best of all it has a loot box mechanic to enhance my experience even more by adding another exciting chance based layer to the game!"
The humor here derives from treating an ad that would normally be read by a Twitch streamer as if it‘s a message coming from the highest office in the land. It reflects a world where the President of the United States is just another influencer shilling mobile games.
Why the Copypasta Resonated
The Raid copypasta became a way for the gaming community to take a piece of marketing that felt impossible to avoid and transform it into a shared cultural touchstone. By copying, pasting, and remixing the ad, they turned it from an annoyance into an inside joke.
Dr. Natalia Kucirkova, a professor of early childhood and development at the University of Stavanger who studies digital trends, says that the practice of taking a piece of media and altering it to convey a different meaning has a long history.
"The Raid copypasta is an example of ‘digital remix culture,‘ where internet users take existing content and give it new meaning by modifying it," Dr. Kucirkova told me. "We see this with meme formats, viral videos, and now, marketing messages. It‘s a way for people to assert control over media narratives and subvert the original intent of the content."
In the case of Raid Shadow Legends, the original intent was to get people to download and play a game. But through the lens of the copypasta, that sales pitch becomes a form of performative irony. Twitch streamers reading a message hyping up a mobile RPG with "detailed models, environments and smooth 60 frames per second animations" suddenly sounds insincere and even vaguely ridiculous.
Dr. Jamie Cohen, a professor of new media at Molloy College who researches digital cultures, views the Raid copypasta as a reflection of how younger audiences engage with influencer marketing.
"For many digital natives, there‘s this inherent skepticism of advertising that presents itself as authentic or relatable," Dr. Cohen said. "They‘re very attuned to the conventions of influencer marketing and can easily sniff out when something feels fake or forced. The Raid copypasta takes those conventions to an absurd extreme to point out how hollow and formulaic they can be."
Indeed, part of the reason the copypasta spread so widely is because it tapped into a growing sense of marketing fatigue within the gaming community. As sponsorships have become an increasingly common monetization tactic for content creators, audiences have started to push back against what they see as excessive shilling.
Joost van Dreunen, an adjunct assistant professor at the NYU Stern School of Business and author of the book "One Up: Creativity, Competition, and the Global Business of Video Games," says that Raid‘s sponsorship strategy was particularly ill-suited to the gaming audience.
"Gamers are a savvy bunch when it comes to advertising," van Dreunen told me. "They‘ve been inundated with marketing messages their entire lives and can quickly tell when something is inauthentic. The Raid sponsorships were so ubiquitous and over-the-top that they almost felt like a parody of mobile game advertising, which made them ripe for memetic mockery."
Raid‘s Legacy and the Future of Influencer Marketing
Despite the memetic backlash to its sponsorships, Raid Shadow Legends has proven to be a remarkably successful game, generating hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue since its launch. While many gamers derided the ads, the campaign undoubtedly managed to attract a sizable player base.
It‘s unclear whether the virality of the Raid copypasta ultimately helped or harmed the game‘s brand in the long run. On one hand, the meme kept Raid in the cultural conversation for months and provided a form of free exposure. On the other, much of that conversation centered around mocking the game‘s advertising tactics.
Regardless, the legacy of the Raid Shadow Legends sponsorships and ensuing copypasta has important implications for the future of influencer marketing in the gaming space. It demonstrates the delicate balance that game publishers and content creators must strike when promoting products to an increasingly marketing-weary audience.
"The Raid copypasta should be a warning to game companies that gamers are not a passive audience that will uncritically consume sponsored messages," said Dr. Cohen of Molloy College. "If an influencer campaign comes across as inauthentic or forced, it risks becoming a meme in ways that can subvert the original marketing goals."
Van Dreunen of NYU Stern believes that the Raid backlash could lead to a shift in how mobile games approach influencer partnerships. "I think we‘ll see more emphasis on authentic, long-term relationships between games and content creators," he said. "One-off sponsorships with dozens of influencers reading the same script verbatim are not a sustainable strategy in the current media landscape."
As the gaming industry continues to grapple with the challenges posed by influencer marketing, the Raid Shadow Legends copypasta serves as a quintessential example of how even the most carefully crafted ad campaign can be transformed into something wildly different in the hands of digital culture. It‘s a testament to the power of internet communities to take a piece of corporate messaging and turn it into a shared cultural experience, one meme at a time.
For Raid Shadow Legends, what began as a straightforward sponsorship initiative ended up taking on a memetic life of its own, etching a strange yet significant place in the annals of gaming history. The game may fade from relevance, but the copypasta it inspired will likely endure as a reminder of a peculiar moment when a mobile RPG became an unlikely cultural touchstone – whether it wanted to or not.
Did you like this post?
Click on a star to rate it!
Average rating 0 / 5. Vote count: 0
No votes so far! Be the first to rate this post.
