Criticism

Many on YouTube have become very critical of DSP because of his actions and/or decisions, for a number of reasons. In addition to masturbating during a live stream intended for and watched by children, his status as a "hypocrite", "asshole", "elitist", "liar", "manchild", and "idiot" has been acknowledged and universally accepted by his detractors, bigger youtubers, smaller youtubers, actors, videogame journalists, and those unfortunate enough to stumble across his "content". Even companies such as Achievement Hunter have laughed at DSP. Some people have also called him "the cancer of gaming". 
 * 1) Phil is well known for shrugging off all criticism as hate. He is notorious for insulting those who criticize him or express a different opinion than him. As an indirect result, he very often ends up insulting fans to which he says "good riddance". He brands all criticism and parodies of him as hate and online bullying and has said that all youtubers who dislike him are bad people and/or "idiots". He claims that anything negative towards him is not justified and that he doesn't understand why some people don't like him, and people in turn will say he has no self-awareness. He often accuses those who create videos criticizing him as jealous haters and trolls. He laughs at people's supposed immaturity when they challenge his statements. He also brands anyone who finds anything of his controversial as drama queens. Many critics have identified themselves as former fans but Phil dismisses them, saying they were not "true fans" and have been "indoctrinated" by his supposed detractors. Phil has called his critics: "mentally ill", "sociopaths", "haters", "trolls", "cowards", "criminals", "kids/children", etc. He also said that the common Youtuber is a "dumb fuck".
 * 2) His critics have also become the scapegoat for all his misfortunes.
 * 3) When his views began to decrease, he said it was because his critics discouraged newcomers from watching his videos.
 * 4) After getting SWATed, though both fans and critics were outraged by what happened, he claimed that the perpetrator was inspired by his critics to commit what he called "attempted murder" and encouraged his fans to find videos criticizing him and make a comment about how it, supposedly, nearly got him killed.
 * 5) After getting a copyright strike against his main channel, he compared the situation to having a gun put to his head, and blamed his critics for what happened.
 * 6) Phil has repeatedly had conflicts with everyone he encounters and wherever he decides to upload videos. Prior to YouTube, DSP would constantly trash-talk, insult, and threaten other members of the fighting game community, gaining wide-spread hate, and leading to the nickname "The King of Hate". One example is when he threatened to find Isiah "Triforce" Johnson and beat him up. He also bragged about being the best fighting game player in the country, superior to players like Alex Valle, Mike Watson, and John Choi after placing 4th at Evo in 2005 for a flawed port (which DSP readily admits) of Super Turbo, further lowering his reputation in the community. Afterwards, playing a normal arcade port, Phil would repeatedly lose to all these top players. In 2016, DSP trash talked about FloE and Blackpeddles.
 * 7) DSP has also been criticized for putting ads on videos where he talks about recent tragedies and disasters, such as Hurricane Sandy, the Sandy Hook Shooting, and the death of his friend. Many accuse him of attempting to monetize the situation. Phil did not make any defense against these accusations and simply threatened those who accused him, saying "I will come find you and I will beat the shit out of you."
 * 8) In the past, DSP has addressed people who use ad-block, saying that it hurts businesses online who earn money based on ads, which is true; however, ad-block is extremely popular regardless. From 2010-2018 DSP had an ad-based contract with Machinima, and he encouraged viewers to disable any ad-blocking software they may have. He even goes as far to say that people who use ad-block are "thieves".
 * 9) As noted previously, Phil made YouTube his full-time job in 2010, after being laid off from Helicopter Support, Inc. in Trumbull, CT in 2010. However, his original YouTube channel, DarkSydePhil lost its Adsense partnership in later 2010 after Phil encouraged users to click on the ads at the beginning of his videos. Though he claims this is untrue and that the real reason he lost his Adsense is because youtube could not stand the notion of him becoming successful and making a living off gaming.
 * 10) DSP moved his content to blip.tv in 2010, but he was banned for anti-Semitic remarks that he made during his Dead Space 2 Demo playthrough. In the videos, he roleplays Issac Clarke (the lead protagonist) as the "last remaining Nazi" and refers to the Necromorphs (the enemies) as the "Jews", whose "greed" caused them to become monsters. Rather than apologizing, Phil instead blamed a "troll" who reported the video, claiming it was done out of jealousy. More recently, Phil has advanced the excuse that he was simply using a "well-known" character from the Howard Stern show, although no can recall such an event on Stern. And while he claims that he has apologized (again, which no one can recall seeing), Phil also stated that it's something only a small group of people care about and that they need to get over it.
 * 11) From 2011-2018 Phil had been partnered with Machinima as a director with no team. He had an advocate at one point but has since lost touch due to restructure. As of March 2013 Phil also regularly streamed on his Twitch.tv channel, and was partnered with the website. After Twitch staff told Phil in November 2014 to reduce his streaming rate, Phil quit the site and started streaming on YouTube, resorting to a primitive IRC chat client. (As well as short-changing his paying Twitch subscribers, many of whom were outraged.) From 2018 to 2019 he had a partnership with curse but abandoned them when his AdSense account was unbanned. He has since been using it.
 * 12) Many have taken issue with Phil's style of commentary. His commentary can consist of snorts, burps, clearing his throat, whining/complaining, singing, toilet humor jokes, being over-dramatic, anger at and insults at the game developers, or sexual remarks about female characters. He sometimes tells a game or a character in a game to "suck [his] dick". He has become known for making offensive jokes, such as saying "in China dey say chicky chang wang Charlie Chan chicka chocka chocka cha". During his Walking Dead playthrough, when Clementine, a young child, is to stitch her arm, he laughs and makes sexual noises while she screams in pain. Many viewers feel he ruins cutscenes in games with his commentary. He has also become known for insulting Troy Baker and Hideo Kojima. He is equally verbally abusive towards other gamers when losing online fighting game matches, punctuated by an infamous tirade forInjustice where Phil called his opponent an "asshole", "fucking idiot", "fucking loser", "your mother probably shat you out you piece of shit" who "sits in his mom's basement" "eating your whole fucking bag of Doritos and chugging down your fucking Fanta".
 * 13) DSP's sportsmanship has also been heavily criticized. As mentioned above, Phil trash talks his opponents. If he wins, Phil will boast how his victory came from skill. If he loses, he will blame lag, his controller, the character he is playing as, or the character is playing against. He often accuses other players of watching his stream and counter picking or performing so called "online combos" and after losing will insult his opponent telling them to "go die in a fire" and calling them "a waste of human life".
 * 14) In addition to the problems with DSP's commentary style cited above, Phil often does a very poor job of understanding the controls and mechanisms he plays. He sometimes will complain about the framerate in some games, or bash a game for the framerate alone. Often, when a tutorial is offered, Phil replies with "shut the fuck up" and skips it, only to repeatedly make mistakes later, and he blames the game developers for not properly explaining the mechanics. Phil constantly complains about the game not working, or game bugs/glitches, when at times the issues are his own fault, and he rarely ever admits his faults. Phil claims this is his "comedic persona" and that he could be good at games if he wanted to. This comes into direct contrast when he claims to have no gimmick and is the "realest person" on YouTube. He has over the years contradicted himself on whether or not he is actually good at playing games.
 * 15) Phil has his own forums for discussion about his various videos. However, he constantly deleted posts, banned users and locked threads that looked upon him in a negative light. It got to the point where a majority of his mods had felt he was behaving childishly and abusively. Many moderators attempted to convince Phil of this and, after multiple failed attempts, he finally agreed to stop closing threads and consult the moderators instead. However, he did not keep his word and continued to close threads and even rescinded the administrator status of the moderators. Phil struggled to keep the site running on his own and eventually an unknown party hijacked the full access of the site in late 2014. Phil decided to shut the forums as well as all of Kingofhate.com until further notice.In 2015, with help from one of the moderators, he designed and reopened the site and forums stating he would be using them for utility purposes of gathering fan created content for his content. However, all his moderators chose to finally leave. Phil has stated that he blames them for what happened to his forums and within 3 weeks of the website being open again, he again started to close threads, ban users and delete postings that either stated negative facts about him or had conversations about the group known as the "SoK" (Sons of Kojima) or any other "haters".
 * 16) Phil has also been criticized for his behavior and responses on his own forums. He is known for disregarding and breaking forum rules. Many forum users and moderators have complained and even flagged Phil's posts to which Phil responds with an insult laden message and even once wrote "I cannot break the rules. I am the rules".
 * 17) Many viewers of Phil have also complained of their treatment in the stream chat while watching his live stream. Many of them complain of moderators that abuse their powers, banning anyone that gives criticism, says anything negative, or says anything that is not directly related to Phil or his video. Other stream moderators have brought this up with Phil but he ignores all the complaints and insults the moderators who take these complaints seriously, saying they are being "fooled by the same group of people over and over" and that anyone who agreed with the complaints were "deluded beyond belief."
 * 18) In early 2015, Phil decided to open a Patreon page, which he has admitted is a donation based service. Even though he had stated numerous times in the past he would never do so and making fun of  Angry Joe for his page. Ever since, people on YouTube have accused Phil of only caring about views, money andPatreon.
 * 19) DSP has criticized the mainstream media for being unprofessional in their game reviews by saying they don't finish games from start to finish, to give that game that they're reviewing a fair review. Despite this, DSP himself has reviewed games without completing them, such as Tony Hawk's Pro Staker 5, Lords of the Fallen and Homefront: The Revolution.
 * 20) In the past, DSP has addressed people who use ad-block, saying that it hurts businesses online who earn money based on ads, which is true; however, ad-block is extremely popular regardless. In 2016, DSP now has an ad-based contract with Machinima, and he encourages viewers to disable any ad-blocking software they may have. He even goes as far to say that people who use ad-block are "thieves".
 * 21) In addition to groups which DSP calls his "detractors", he also has had back and forth disputes with other well-known YouTubers as well.
 * 1) TotalBiscuit :  In 2012, when DSP gave the video game  Journey  a much worse review than the majority of the critical acclaim given by others, DSP called out TotalBiscuit for having a differing opinion, as the latter had declared his Game of the Year for 2012. In more recent years when DSP was subjected to mass criticism, TotalBiscuit accused DSP of name dropping him in an effort to seem like he was a respected associate of his.  Furthermore, when asked about DSP and his recent behavior in response to the negativity surrounding him, TotalBiscuit expressed his dislike for DSP's attitude and content, citing his reputation of pinning blame on everything and everyone else but himself when it comes to his video game playthroughs. He also stated that although he doesn't like seeing people getting harassed online, he feels that DSP has brought that harassment on himself due to the premise of his content, in which he acts like a "court jester that doesn't want to be taken seriously". DSP responds by calling him an "elitist" and says TotalBiscuit never of his videos for feeling this way.
 * 2) Tobuscus: DSP has had multiple frauds with Toby Turner. In 2012, DSP was pissed that ads appeared on his videos that were advertising content by Tobuscus. In 2016, Toby Turner had personal issues that were going on, and viewers wanted DSP's thoughts on the matter. He posted up a video as a result, which got mainly negative reviews by fans and haters alike. He managed to take a story about a woman possibly drugged and raped by Toby and turned it into a 24 minute video complaining about his own problems and whining about how he is treated. Only a small part of the video actually has DSP's thoughts on the subject. He said, "I don't give a fuck about Toby Turner."
 * 3) EventStatus: In 2014, EventStatus criticized many of Phil's actions and challenged his claims of being a "former pro-fighting game player". EventStatus challenged Phil to a match saying he will give Phil as much time to prepare as the latter wants and the loser will permanently leave all social media. Both fans and critics encouraged Phil to take the challenge but those who did were banned.Phil declined and insulted EvenStatus, saying that this was done as a way to get attention.
 * 4) AlphaOmegaSin namedropped DSP in a Street Fighter V rant video in 2016, making DSP seemingly a infamous rage-quitter in fighting games. DSP claims this to be completely false, and claims he never raged-quit in his life in fighting games. He first addressed this in a pre-stream video, and he got into a Twitter war with Omega later on. DSP then posted up a video to clear the air.
 * 5) 2013 was a very big year of negativity for DSP, including the birth of "This Is How You Don't Play" videos. As a result of this, he posted up a video titled "Addressing the Negativity" which is one of the most controversial things he ever did, claiming that everything said about him was either slanderous or exaggerated, that those who 'hate' on him do so to "jump on the bandwagon".
 * 6) For his 2013 Christmas Special, Phil created a video parodying 'How the Grinch Stole Christmas'. With his own written song lyrics, he tells the story of how a jealous Troll, who lives in his grandparents' basement, dedicates his life to hating on Phil and creating This Is How You Don't Play videos. But, just as the Grinch fails to steal Christmas, the Troll fails to stop DSP who continues playing. The Troll represents DSP's 'detractors', at least how he views them, and their supposed dedication to ending DSP out of jealousy, causing the video to be heavily criticized for its misrepresentation of that group and insults. The video's lyrics have also been criticized. In one segment, he sings "If you said this shit to my face, can you guess what I'd do, Mr. Troll?" and plays a clip of Phil punching a small piece of cardboard. Another segment had the lyrics "If I had the chance to be filthy rich and going back in time to prevent your birth...fill up the DeLorean!"
 * 7) Phil had also gained notoriety for allegedly having recent parody videos taken down with the help of his Machinima contract. The resulting backlash he received from people on social media caused him to go on a twitter meltdown, hurling numerous profanities at each and everyone involved including Slowbeef and TotalBiscuit, the former of which uploaded a video montage of people parodying Phil's persona while the latter took another stab at Phil via a video comment using the writing style of said persona. As a result of the recent drama, Phil's potential audience took yet another hit.
 * 8) For several years, Phil had been known to bash the extremely popular game Minecraft and people who enjoy it, even using the phrase "you probably play Minecraft" as an insult, though he never played the game himself until in early 2015, in which through Patreon, the Patrons had voted Phil to play the game he once never even thought of playing.
 * 9) During a Mortal Kombat X stream on May 10, 2015, Phil was approached by a viewer regarding anincident that occurred two years ago involving an altercation between PandaLee and people on Twitch. This instigated a very hostile reaction from Phil, leading him to insult this person, threaten him with physical violence, and encourage his fans to cyberbully him and spam his inbox. The resulting backlash was so immense that Phil had to make a public video apology in an attempt to clear the air surrounding the issue. But, while he apologized for his volatile reaction, he did not apologize for threatening said individual nor did he apologize for encouraging his fans to cyberbully him. He even claimed that this was a plot to have him react like this to slander him.
 * 10) Phil has been known to go on angry tirades on Twitter, insulting more successful youtubers and well as anyone who has a different view than him. One notable incident: a fan of DSP tweeted that his mother had recently fallen ill and Phil's videos helped him feel better. Phil did not respond to this tweet though he did respond to a question involving his schedule. A Twitter user known for criticizing DSP responded to the tweet and expressed his condolences. When Phil heard of this, he called it harassment and bullying and encouraged people to flag all the critics tweets so Twitter Support would shut down his account.
 * 11) In early 2015, Phil decided to open a Patreon page, which he has admitted is a donation based service. Even though he had stated numerous times in the past he would never do so and making fun of Angry Joefor his page. Ever since, people on YouTube have accused Phil of only caring about views, money andPatreon.
 * 12) Fans and critics alike take issue with Phil's usage of Patreon. He has, on several occasions, failed to live up to the promises he makes. One instance was his promise of 7+ hours of Crash 2 gameplay if given enough money. After reaching that goal, Phil played for less than five and a half hours and said he would only continue if donated more money. A more infamous instance was the reboot of Project 7. He promised that if enough money had been donated he would reboot the series and would include the names of his highest payers and would show the progress made thus far. However, after reaching the goal, Phil announced that he would still postpone Project 7 and would not refund the money given but would thumbs down the video instead. Phil has also developed a policy that he would not perform any of the reached milestones unless it is several hundred dollars above the mark. He claims that this is done to counter false and dropped patreon pledges. He has began to only allow those who have pledged to his patreon to play him in online multiplayer because of recent 'trolling'.
 * 13) DSP raged-quit Persona 3, which was a Patreon's Choice Playthrough, on August 1, 2016. DSP got 1250 dollars for a playthrough that he didn't end up finishing, which has gone on for several months and at 166 parts. Fans and haters alike are both upset at this, especially considering the fact that DSP was playing the game on easy level.
 * 14) Phil's spending decisions have come into question. He often talks of his back problem and his inability to afford a treatment. He also often talks about the difficulty he has paying off his bills and mortgages. Despite this, he has taken vacations with his girlfriend and staying at executive suites. He also possess numerous models and action figures that had occupied most of the space of his original condo. He was selling some of these models at high prices, but he gave up since around late 2015. Phil also claims that he can't afford certain things, while at other times, he buys things that could cost a lot.
 * 15) Phil has criticized people who get advanced copies of games before their street date and play them before street date, saying that everyone should get a game and play it at a similar time. However, Phil has gotten games in advance himself, and has broken street date before as well.
 * 16) Phil's relation with PandaLee has also become a source of controversy. Not only have fans and former fans objected to her attitude and commentary, there is controversy over when Phil started dating her. Phil has repeatedly insisted that he only began dating PandaLee after she reached legal age but a number of people who claimed to have known Phil in real life claim that he and PandaLee have been dating long before she reached legal age and have simply kept it it a secret. However, the validity of any of these claims from both parties have yet to be confirmed.
 * 17) DSP's fans have also become a source of criticism. To counter the rising number of groups exposing or criticizing Phil's actions on the internet, many of his fans have created channels to supposedly expose the actions of those groups, often using similar names. However, the videos posted on said channels are often slanderous and often makes accusations with circumstantial and sometimes no evidence. This has caused at least one channel, DSP World Order, to be terminated due to repeated and severe violations of its terms of service, though another channel with the same name has been created. Other fans, while not creating separate YouTube channels, have gone to videos criticizing DSP and attempted to instigate fights, make similar baseless accusations, and threats of violence. YouTuber AggyPlays once asked Phil to do voice acting for a machinima series she was creating. However, despite accepting the role, she reported that he was difficult to work with. Upon hearing this he accused her of using him to get attention from the "hater" community and his fans soon began to harass her over this. In a separate incident, a fan claimed he had proof that the Sons of Kojima were involved with DSP's swatting; his proof: DSP was swatted on a Wednesday and the Sons of Kojima hold a podcast every Thursday. Attempts to start debates simply resulted in more insults.

End of Friendship With John Rambo & Howard
After Phil moved to Washington, his contact with John Rambo and Howard declined until it stopped entirely. During this time, John Rambo created a Paymeton parody. Many of accused that the parody was directed toward Darksydephil, causing many to wonder what happened between them, but John insisted that, while Darksydephil was a source of inspiration, the parody was aimed at youtubers as a whole who overly relied on Patreon. He also asked that people not make assumptions about events they do not know about and that he rather not talk about what happened to not harm Phil's reputation. Eventually, Phil was asked about it again on an Ask the King episode and said that he has not heard from John or Howard. Phil claimed that he did not know why he has not heard from them and that 'real men' discuss their problems. He said that the only possible thing he could think of was that they were jealous and bitter of his rise in popularity.

John and Howard felt they had no choice but to respond to this and created a video describing everything that happened between them. The original video was flagged and removed by an unknown party though others have re-uploaded it.

John and Howard describe how Andre and Paul, childhood friends of Howard, had attended film school and were interested in starting a project. After deciding to bring Phil in on this, this became Project 7. However, the editing and special effects took a great amount of time and effort. Furthermore, Andre finds out he is going to be a father,making it even harder. John suggested to Phil that he pay them for their effort but Phil said that he had offered to pay Andre and Paul but they turned it down. However, Howard talked to Andre and Paul and discovered that Phil had never offered to pay them and lied to keep the money for himself. In fact, none of the people involved with Project 7 were given any cut. The only person who was paid was John but this was so he could continue to help produce Project 7 since his car broke down and he needed to buy a used one. Howard was particularly irate that Phil then began buying figurines, a BMW, and other luxury items with the money, feeling Phil was making money off the backs of others.

The same was done with the Project 7 T-shirts. They all contributed in the cost of making the T-shirts but Phil made all the revenue and did not offer any of them a percentage.

They talked about how when Scott passed away they informed Phil and asked him to contact them. However, Phil did not respond but created a monetized video on the subject, irritating everyone in their friends group that Phil would try to make money off of the death of another.

Howard recalled that not long before Phil moved to Washington, he called for a final playthrough together. However, Howard had already made plans with his girlfriend. Phil said that if Howard doesn't attend then it solidifies that they are not friends, so Howard had cancel his plans with his girlfriend. But, once Phil moved Howard has not heard from him. He would send him occasional messages but Phil would not reply.

John also talks about several times Phil ended up saying something untrue about him on a video. One incident was: after seeing comments praising John Rambo's performance in Project 7, Phil claimed that it was all his idea. John and Howard both confirmed that Phil actually had nothing to do with those parts and were irate that he would make a video talking about it instead of talking to them. John confronted Phil who apologized. Another incident was when Phil wished to play Mario Party with Leanna, though his viewers wanted it with John. Phil responded by saying John does not like games like Mario Party, causing his viewers to send insulting messages to John Rambo about the subject. John confronted Phil again who apologized. Both John and Howard say that Phil would repeatedly do things they dislike and he would apologize after they confront him but made no effort not to do it again, leading them to no longer associate with him, feeling that attempting to confront him about it would bear no results.

They ended the video saying that they still wish Phil the best but if he takes issue with what was said he should contact them, not make a reply video but text them. Phil was originally going to make a reply video but chose not to, saying that the 'haters' would twist his words.