Soulja Boy has pulled his game consoles from his online store

For the past few weeks, we’ve been reporting on the dealings of Soulja Boy, rapper and now an entrepreneur. It seems not that long ago that we were reporting on his entrance into the games console space: the SouljaGame Console, and the SouljaGame Handheld. We watched as, despite the mounting controversy, Soulja Boy added more consoles to his lineup.

It was in that very article, I noticed that people were spreading seemingly unsupported claims that Soulja Boy was being put under legal pressure. Everyone seemed convinced of its truth, because honestly how long could such a public, flagrant disregard for the law go unchecked? Maybe those reports were correct, we’ll never be sure. But one thing is pretty clear, looking over Soulja Boy’s store there are a few notable absences.

The four consoles launched and made purchasable on Soulja Boy’s online store have been removed. This is no surprise really. All four consoles were bought from other retailers, minimally rebranded (if at all) and marked up to the rappers customers. However, the bigger problem was that these consoles were emulators. Essentially, they were built to run illegal copies of games, thousands of which came pre-installed on these systems.

Soulja Boy believed he was going to receive no punishment and continued his one person gaming crusade with impunity. It’s quite telling I suppose that in a tweet to respond to the possibility of legal action from Nintendo, Soulja Boy so eloquently said: “Nintendo ain’t gon do S**T”. That tweet has since been deleted, the one he put up a day ago is not:

I had to boss up, I didn’t have a choice. ??‍♂️

— Soulja Boy (Drako) (@souljaboy) December 29, 2018

At this point, there is no specific information regarding the decision to pull the consoles. Suffice to say, it seems likely that despite the tweets to the contrary, Nintendo, or any of the other various companies that Soulja Boy ripped off, decided to get involved. The simple fact of the matter is Soulja Boy tried to make a business out of ripping off the biggest players in the industry and one way or another that is over now. We can only hope this serves as a reminder to not try and screw over an industry for a quick buck with no expected repercussions.

I hope Soulja Boy will go on to support the games industry, rather than just make a quick buck from it. Even amongst all the chaos that was this console situation, he has been doing other talks regarding games. He’s intending on creating an organisation of esports teams, possibly even hiring Tyler “Ninja” Blevins. This is the kind of thing I hope we see more of in the future. Celebrities investing and helping grow the games industry, making it better for everyone.