Mighty Mike Plays’ dad has walked back claims that he was fired after spending $118,000 on YouTube ads on his company card and issuing refunds for T-shirts with AI designs on.
Back in mid-September, the Mighty Mike Plays YouTube channel was thrust into the spotlight after his dad – Dave – claimed that his son had spent $118,000 on YouTube adverts. Mighty Mike’s dad said that he’d initially spent $20 to run the ads, but things spiraled out of control and his company card was used.
In that, Dave also claimed that he would be fired from his job if the money wasn’t repaid, and T-shirts were launched to help fund that. However, those T-shirts came under fire due to having AI-generated designs on them.
Now, Mighty Mike Plays’ dad has broken his silence on that part of the drama and walked back claims that his job was under threat, as well as addressing other rumors.
That came in an hour-long video, titled Allow me to explain…, which was posted on October 1. “I’m not going to pretend that I handled everything perfectly; I know I made some mistakes,” Dave said, adding that he has been “misunderstood” at times.
“I didn’t think it would go so viral and I obviously didn’t handle everything in the right way. But, just to make it clear, I didn’t come to YouTube to ask for help, I wasn’t looking for any sort of help, any GoFundMe, any T-shirts to be sold, I was actually expecting people to think its funny and laugh.”
As for the merch, Dave explained that memecoins and other merch shops had been set up using the Mighty Mike Plays name and he couldn’t “sit around” while others tried to profit.
“That was not the move. I shouldn’t have used AI,” he said, noting he spent “$10k” on it. “If I could go back, I’d do it differently, but again, I didn’t have the luxury of time. There are about 100 people who got free shirts.”
Dave also clarified that he lost a contract with an unnamed company, hence him saying he had been “fired” from his job.
“What happened in reality was that the contract between company A and company B just got terminated. Isn’t that the same thing?” he said.
“I own my own company, so what? In fact, you guys didn’t see them all. I own like 12 companies. Some of them are productive, as we speak, some of them are just collecting dust. Just to clarify, yeah, I consider that being fired. If my company lost a contract with this important company, then how is that not being fired?”
Mighty Mike’s dad also ntoed that he’d “coached” his son to handle the drama surrounding the drama, revealing that his schoolmates told him he wasn’t a “real YouTuber” as his views were paid for.
At one point, Dave also suggested he’d have to sell his house to pay off the credit card charge. However, some YouTubers dug into that claim, finding that he owned two homes worth around $4 million.
Dave has repeatedly batted back at claims that his son isn’t real and that there is AI-generated gameplay too.