Why did OTK and MoistCr1TiKaL's Starforge Systems receive backlash from fans?

Earlier this week, esports and content-creator organization One True King partnered up with popular Twitch streamer Charlie "MoistCr1TiKaL" to release their very own PC-building company, Starforge Systems. As expected, the announcement was met with significant excitement from the community. However, fans were left displeased after Starforge revealed their PCs' price ranges.

Furthermore, many also speculated about the lack of marketing strategy and understanding displayed by some members of the group, such as Nick "Nmplol," and the fact that Mizkif allegedly banned or removed users that were critical of the company.

Although MoistCr1TiKaL has attempted to pacify the lambasting comments about the company by claiming to restructure the pricing in the future, fans are still disgruntled.

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What's going wrong for Starforge Systems

Fans have been breathing down the necks of Starforge Systems' management for several reasons, chief among them being the absurd pricing.

For context, Starforge's entry-level gaming PC with the RTX 1660TI and an i3 processor is offered at a price of $1K. However, both the aforementioned components are antiquated in today's gaming industry, and such a hefty amount did not go down well.

Even though the flagship models feature the latest and most up-to-date equipment and components, their pricing of $2.5K to $3.5K is still rather high, according to many fans. Gaming experts have found that building a PC from scratch is going to cost less, and interested gamers can easily save over $1K by avoiding buying from OTK's latest enterprise.

In addition to all this, there has been severe backlash at the some of the OTK members' lack of marketing knowhow. One Redditor mentioned how Nmplol was completely ignorant of their existing market rivals, such as NZXT, who sell PCs at much lower prices than Starforge.

Matthew "Mizkif" and Zack "Asmongold," co-owners of OTK, were also embroiled in controversy after they reportedly banned users for expressing negative opinions on Starforge Systems.

Reddit user u/Autropos stated that Mizkif unbanned everyone that was previously banned for using certain Twitch emotes:

Any provocative response on the livestream during their announcement was encountered with a permanent ban. Any viewer who commented "sell" or "used stock" or sent the "corpa" emote received a perma-ban shortly thereafter, with some bans spanning multiple OTK channels.

Leading up to the reveal, a few of the streamers participating in the reveal explicitly told their audiences to engage freely. However, the overall negative response to the company's debut was evidently too much to endure, resulting in major censorship.

After a torrent of criticism, Starforge Systems altered their prices, but not by a great extent. The opening model PC, which was initially priced at $999.99, is now available at $899.99. Prices for both the flagship models have also been reduced from $2499.99 and $3499.99 to $2399.99 and $3399.99, respectively. The pricing of their second model, Horizon Pro PC, has remained the same.

Additionally, Starforge Systems has also decided to upgrade the hardware of their most expensive PC, the Horizon Creator Edition PC. This revision will see the rig featuring a more powerful GPU, the RTX 3090.

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It currently remains to be seen how fans will react to the changes going forward. Despite the negative reviews, the gaming community will no doubt remain hopeful of having another functional and healthy PC-making company in the industry.