Pirate Software is what happens when you
give someone with a massive ego a
microphone and an audience. Not only
does he have some of the worst takes the
online gaming community has ever seen,
>> oh [ __ ] now this is actually really
dumb. It's used car salesman garbage.
This is [ __ ] It's [ __ ] Not only do I
not want to back this, I'm going to
actively tell people not to.
>> He also seems deathly allergic to taking
accountability.
>> Wants me to sit down, gravel on my
knees, and be like, "I'm so sorry, Mr.
Yumato. It was all my fault. The mage."
>> Even Dr. K, a professional psychiatrist,
failed to make him realize his own
arrogance.
>> I think sometimes the things that I talk
about in regards to those types of
things is misconstrued as arrogance or
boasting when in reality I'm just trying
to give context.
>> So that is the problem right there. So I
want you to listen to this phrase. This
gets misconstrued as arrogance, but in
reality it's this. That is the most
arrogant statement on the planet, bro.
Like tell me I'm wrong.
>> Okay, I don't see it that way, but all
right. And the moment the internet saw
his true colors, it was all downhill
from there. Even then, the one thing he
still had going for him was his
technical prowess as an expert game
developer and an elite hacker.
>> It was a lot. And so after that, I ended
up going to work for the United States
Department of Energy cuz I'm a hacker,
offensive security guy, and I hacked
power plants for the federal government.
And now then I quit and now I make video
games on the internet. I've been doing
this for a couple years now. Well, as it
turns out, much of what he claimed might
have either been a flatout lie or at
best, an over-the-top exaggeration. When
Pirate Software told everyone that he
worked on video games for 20 years, that
he worked as a hacker, why did anyone
believe him when this was what he was
putting out? Why did it take this long
for people to call him out for being a
fraud when this is his magnumopus? That
took him 8 years. Eight years of
perfecting your craft for something a
middle schooler could make. This isn't
the work of a professional. This isn't
even the work of an amateur. It's
pathetic.
Hi, I'm the internet anarchist. I create
weekly YouTube documentaries. And today,
we're revisiting the man who is
currently going through one of the most
spectacular downfalls in YouTube
history, pirate software. how everything
is built over the years is unraveling
right in front of his eyes. And it's
only getting worse with each passing
day. Since while being supremely
arrogant is bad enough, Pirate Software
might even get in legal trouble for
defrauding his audience. Now, I've
already made a video going over the
major controversy that initiated his
downfall, but if you haven't watched
that video yet or need a refresher,
here's a quick recap to get you up to
speed. Pirate Software, aka Jason Thor
Hall, is an ex Blizzard employee who,
after allegedly working for the US
government as a hacker for a bit,
decided to develop his own video game in
2017 called Heartbound. He also started
streaming his game progress on Twitch,
and uploading clips from those streams
on YouTube shorts. These shorts blew up
big time, allowing him to gain millions
of new subscribers on YouTube, over
80,000 paid subs on Twitch, and even
break the Twitch hype train record four
different times. But then 2025 rolled
around, and Thor managed to destroy the
goodwill the internet once had for him.
First, by causing his friends to lose
months of progress in a hardcore World
of Warcraft game and refusing to take
accountability. Wants me to sit down,
gravel on my knees, and be like, "I'm so
sorry, Mr. to your motto. It was all my
fault, the mage.
>> And then by taking a stance against the
stop killing games initiative, which
would stop game publishers from killing
games people had already paid for.
>> Oh [ __ ] Now this is actually really
dumb. It's used car salesman garbage.
This is [ __ ] It's [ __ ] Not only do I
not want to back this, I'm going to
actively tell people not to.
>> He misunderstood the whole movement on a
fundamental level and then used some of
the harshest language he's ever used to
speak up against it. That is a horrible
goddamn direction. That's That's awful,
dude. No. Eat my entire ass. That the
level of stupid that I just had to
receive was like sitting on Twitter for
12 hours. This [ __ ] sucks. That's a
really stupid ass move. That's an
incredibly stupid ass move. I think this
is ass. This is complete garbage. All of
this can eat [ __ ] Then I dropped the
mask entirely.
I have no qualms about that. They can
eat my entire ass. The whole thing. His
viewers were shocked at him blatantly
rejecting something they thought was
good. Thor, on the other hand, continued
posting more videos, doubling down on
his take, but then some of the biggest
creators on the platform like Charlie,
Jack Septicai, and PewDiePie, voiced
their support for the initiative. This
only made Thor look worse by comparison,
making the whole internet, including his
audience, turn against him. Now, Thor
had a chance to retain some of the trust
his viewers had in him, despite the
overwhelming amount of backlash he was
receiving. All he had to do was admit
that he was wrong. But not only did he
not do that, he stuck to his guns
regardless of how wrong he was. He was
caught lying about his games getting
review bombed because of the
controversy, making him look even more
pathetic than he already did. Now, at
the end of my last video, I posed two
possible futures for Thor. He could
either admit that he was wrong and turn
things around, or stay stubborn and turn
into the perpetual lal of the internet.
And from the looks of it, he's chosen
the second option, which has not only
earned him more hate, but has prompted
people to take a deeper look into his
life, starting with his reputation as a
master coder. And what they found was
shocking to say the least. It started
when a YouTuber named Coding Jesus,
whose main content is him dissecting
people's code and pointing out issues,
decided to review the code for
Heartbound in a video titled, "I
reviewed Pirate Software's code. Oh
boy." And as you might be able to judge
from the title, he didn't really have
any good things to say about it with him
even going as far as to declare Thor's
code to be worse than most entry-level
interns. Imagine removing all these
comments. Would you, as a newly added
game developer to his game project, have
any idea that one is Shelly? You would
have no idea. This would never ever be
allowed in a production repository. And
like I like I've been hinting, it's
below what you'd expect of a bottom tier
intern.
>> Thor, however, didn't appreciate the
constructive criticism and handled this
review in the only way he knows how to.
>> It's just another like YouTube grifter
trying to fight for relevance, dude.
That's all that [ __ ] is.
All too common these days.
>> However, there was something Thor said
that was uncharacteristically reasonable
for him and actually made some sense.
It's just a bunch of disingenuous
arguments put up in bad faith trying to
make me look like a bad programmer. And
in reality, this guy has never used the
engine that I'm working in, never used
the language that I'm working with, and
all of his points are moot as a result.
From an objective point of view, his
reasoning here for why Coding Jesus
wasn't able to understand his coding
style because he's not a game developer
seemed sound. That was until another
YouTuber, Quinn Theo, decided to get
Coding Jesus on a call and dissect
Thor's arguments together. They began by
analyzing Thor's comments about coding
Jesus' very first critique with coding
Jesus explaining how Thor doesn't use a
very basic practice in his code that
even school level coders know how to use
manually setting all to zero with eight
lines. Those were set to zero because it
was ending the alarms. By setting them
to zero, you're actually setting the
alarm to off.
>> So what he's doing here is a classic
example of deflection. He pretends the
chatter asked why do you set the alarms
to zero instead of the question which
was why don't you iterate over them in a
for loop. A for loop is a very basic
coding construct. If you're iterating
through a consecutive set of numbers,
you definitely want to use that. It's
the perfect scenario for a for loop
>> while also pointing out how he deflects
from the real question whenever he
doesn't know the answer.
>> But he pretends that he didn't
understand the question and then tries
to answer something else. And in case
you're not familiar with programming, a
commentar summed up Thor's flawed
approach perfectly, stating he is
literally doing the equivalent of
writing 2 + 2 + 2 + 2 + 2 + 2 instead of
writing 2 * 25. But that was just the
tip of the iceberg. Because while
someone might argue that he simply
misunderstood the criticism instead of
purposefully deflecting it, that doesn't
explain why he kept doing the same thing
over and over again.
>> Bright spark is not a magic number. It's
a direct reference to an asset file
called sprite spark. This is how Game
Maker allows you to link sprites and
other assets. When you want to use a
sprite, sound, or other object, you call
it by name.
>> This is disingenuous at best and an
obuscation tactic at worst. Because, as
you can see here, there's a lot of
numbers here. It's very obvious when I'm
talking about a magic number. I'm
talking about things like 1 0 15 270
360. I'm not talking about what my mouse
just happens to be highlighting, which
is uh SPR spark.
>> Almost as if it's a core part of the
tactic he uses to sound more
knowledgeable than he actually is. He
has this repeating theme where somebody
gives him a question and then he pivots
to something that somebody didn't even
ask or address to try to get out of that
question.
>> Something that becomes abruptly clear
when he does address criticism directly
and ends up being objectively wrong
about everything he's saying.
>> Uh data types are not defined in Game
Maker. You cannot define a boolean. You
can use 0, one or true, false. It will.
It doesn't do anything. None of this
matters in this language.
>> The boolean and the data types.
>> Okay.
>> So, I'd like to interpret this in two of
two ways because what he could have been
saying here when he says data types are
not defined, is that you can't create
your own custom data types, which is
indeed wrong. You can create structures
in Game Maker. It's in the
documentation. Search up strrus and
constructors. But maybe he wasn't
referring to strrus. Maybe he was
referring to booleans, which also just
isn't true.
>> What's worse is that he could have
easily avoided looking like a fool. All
he had to do was actually read about the
programming language he claims to be an
expert at. He makes the claim that you
can't define a boolean in Game Maker
because Game Maker itself doesn't have a
native boolean type in its scripting
language. In other words, it interprets
reals as booleans. Now, to reconcile the
fact that he used a boolean in his code
with what he said, I decided to do what
any developer would do, and that is I
consulted the documentation. So if you
go to data types in Game Maker, oh look
at that. You are also provided with
constants true and false which can
always be used in your code to prevent
any issues should the native boolean
type be defined later. This can either
be interpreted as Thor being incredibly
lazy or just simply not knowing booleans
exist in the language he's using. Either
way, it calls into question every claim
Thor has ever made about his coding
skills to this point. As a comment on
YouTube eloquently puts it, "Someone
please take the shovel away from Pirate
Software. This man won't stop digging a
hole for himself. But what's most
concerning is Thor's inability to take
any kind of criticism, even when it's
valid. He set up a wall of denial in
front of him and just disregards anyone
that doesn't agree with him. That said,
this next issue isn't something he can
simply ignore since he might even end up
in court because of it. The bombshell
dropped on July 5th, 2025 when a Twitter
user by the name of Guy made a wild
accusation against Thor, stating,
"Pirate Software accidentally revealed
his DMs with Kronost in the April 1st
Twitch Giga Train, showing that they
were boosting it themselves. This is why
the stream is unavailable to watch." The
gig train he's talking about here is
actually the record-breaking Twitch hype
train Thor was able to reach on April
1st, 2024. A hype train, for those who
don't know, is a Twitch feature that
gets activated when a streamer starts
receiving a lot of donations or gifted
subs in a very short span of time. It
then continues leveling up if the
donations keep coming in. And the more a
hype train progresses, the more rewards
the donors unlock, including special
emojis and gifts that they can use,
incentivizing them to keep spending
their money. As we mentioned earlier,
Thor had already broken multiple Hype
Train records before. However, all of
them pald in comparison to the hype
train on April 1st, 2024, as it managed
to reach past level 105. This was a big
milestone in Thor's career. It made
headlines and turned Thor into an even
bigger name in the online gaming
community. However, if what Guy was
alleging on Twitter was true, it meant
that this record wasn't as legitimate as
it seemed. And the proof he presented
was in the screenshot of the
conversation Thor had with his head mod
Kronos while his hype train was active.
All right, let me know if you do. Bits
is going to be the best way to do it due
to the return if you need to save it.
Bits rather than tier three subs. Tier
three subs might be better. Don't know.
Bits is 82% return when you buy them in
bulk. Have you bought any yet? I've done
100 tier one subs on my personal. Ready
to do 40 tier three subs on an alt. Can
do bits instead or both? did 50,000 bits
at 20 seconds left. Okay, what is the
alt account? Serendipitous Bean. Put
simply, this seemed like Thor telling
his own mod to donate from an alt
account to artificially keep the hype
train going and even telling him to use
bits since Twitch would only take an 18%
cut from them. Now, it was still
possible that some important missing
context could give this conversation a
completely different meaning.
Unfortunately for Thor, someone
uncovered the deleted Twitch VOD this
screenshot was taken from, and Thor's
reaction to it, told his viewers
everything they needed to know. I wished
I could place my head between them and
go full burr mode and make
>> what?
What? What is this? Where is it? I'm
going to find this. I need to find your
message.
God damn it. Click click your garbage
machine.
>> What?
Who are you?
Why are you like this? Number 420.
Deleted.
>> Not only does it prove that the
screenshot is real, viewers could also
see how panicked Thor became when he saw
it, and how he immediately switched to a
different chat before actually finding
and deleting the text to speech donation
that came in. Thor tried to deny any
wrongdoing on Twitter, stating, "Kronos
used his own money to do this and asked
if it was okay to do so. He wasn't paid
for this or told to do it either. He's a
grown man and can spend his money in
whatever way he chooses." "You can hate
me all you like, but going after my
staff is [ __ ] tier behavior. Even
Kronos, his head moderator, came out
with statements of his own denying the
allegations, reading, said this before
in January during the World of Warcraft
drama. People contacted me and others
about donating during the hype train
record in 2024. This year I did less
from the main and I did some from an
alt. Removal of the VOD was, if I recall
correctly, to prevent people from
harassing donators as before. And while
these explanations from both Thor and
Kronos were still a bit suspicious, they
were enough to end the controversy
before it got any worse. Or at least
that's likely what they thought would
happen. But on July 20th, 2025, someone
replied to Guy's original Twitter post
with yet another screenshot. This one
showing the exact messages attached to
the donation Kronos made with his alt
account, Serendipitous Bean. It reads,
"In real life, friend of Kronos and
excited that they are now free from
corporate. Love your stream and what you
do for people here. There aren't many
cool or supportive streamers left once
they get big like this. Stay cool, bud,
and tell Kronos that Ben sends their
regards." In other words, Kronos
pretended to be his own friends, likely
to avoid any suspicions from chat.
However, what made this truly weird was
the fake reaction Thor had when this
donation came in. Serendipitous Beam
with 50,000 bits said IRL friend of
Kronos and excited that they are now
free from corporate.
>> I know.
>> Love your stream and what you do for
people here. There aren't many cool or
supportive streamers left once they get
big like this. Stay cool, bud, and tell
Kronos that Ben sends their regards. I'm
sorry you had to know Kronos in real
life just like now. It's possible Kronos
just wanted to hide his own identity to
not receive hate for donating so much.
However, that just explains the
pretending to be his own friend part. It
does not explain the shameless glazing
that followed. Even if we ignore the
actual message and just focus on the
donation, it's still highly problematic.
Not only did it to manipulate the
viewers into donating more by keeping
the hype train alive, as Legal Mindset
put it in his video, it could even bring
some serious consequences for Thor.
Starting from Twitch itself. So, Kronos
is the main moderate and excited that
they are free from corporate. Love your
stream and what you do for the people
here. There aren't many cooler support
streamers left once they get big like
this. Stay cool, bud, and Kronos that
Ben sends the regards. So, this person
is clearly painting themselves as not
Kronos, not the moderator, but a
separate IRL friend of this moderator,
which is extremely deceptive if you ask
me.
>> Serendipitous Beam with 50,000 bits,
said IRL friend of Kronos and excited
that they are now free from corporate.
>> Love your stream and what you do for
people here. There aren't many cool
supportive streamers left once they get
big like this. Stay cool, bud, and tell
Kronos that Ben sends their regards.
>> I'm sorry you had 500 bit said when it's
young pregnant and going to be real.
>> Dude, this guy can't be real. This guy
actually can't be real. Thor has openly
claimed plenty of times that he hires
and actually pays all his mods.
>> I pay our moderators full-time. Not only
do they have full-time pay, they're on
salary, they also get full-time
benefits, too. Medical, dental, vision,
everything.
>> Like, that's
>> how this place stays cool.
>> So, it wouldn't be difficult for Thor to
reimburse Kronos as part of his monthly
paycheck. Only now it could get him
suspended or even kicked off Twitch
entirely. But that isn't even the worst
of it. According to Legal Mindset, this
has also opened Thor and his mod up to
facing legal repercussions from the
federal government as well. So, you need
representation, omission, or practice
that is likely to mislead a customer.
So, the practice would be, hey, donating
bids from the sock puppet account. The
consumer's interpretation is reasonable
under the circumstances. So, the
consumer is thinking this is a private
party. This is somebody else. This is
not the mod. This is not pirate
software. They're thinking, oh, look,
this person is a standing hype train.
And so because of that, because that
misleading representation, that
materially led others to donate more to
keep it going. It's a very well-known
thing in scams and cons. This is
something that confidence men do. They
get fake buyers to go out there and jin
up interest so that people will buy
stuff even though it's overpriced.
>> And if that wasn't enough, Thor and
Twitch could also get trouble on a state
level as well based on Thor falsely
advertising the success of his hype
train.
>> So Consumer Legal Remedies Act,
California has that. And I mentioned
California, by the way, because that's
where Twitch is. So, it would be very
reasonable if a California donor, if a
California whale brought a claim against
a California corporation in a California
court against, you know, Twitch and
against uh, you know, Mr. Mr. Pirate
Software. But beyond that, there's
California Business Code 17500, which
leads to false misleading statements or
false misleading advertisement. And this
could be perceived as, hey, falsely
advertising that you're number one on
the hype train, that you're this hype
train leader, that you're this person
that needs to be donated to keep this
thing going to breach all these levels
when really most of those levels, or
maybe a lot of those levels, some of
those levels were just artificially
inflated by either Pirate Software's mod
or these sock puppet accounts. I mean,
who knows? We don't really have a full
track on that uh yet.
>> But even if he manages to escape any
direct repercussions, these
controversies have only accelerated his
downfall with the number of people
unsubscribing from his YouTube channel
each month jumping from 100,000 plus
when the stop killing games controversy
happened to over 200,000 after these new
controversies came to light. It truly
seems like Thor's reputation has reached
a point where even if he apologizes now
or tries to take accountability, it's
pretty unlikely that he'll ever regain
the audience he once had. But just when
we thought he couldn't sink further, he
somehow found a way. As I was making
this video, Quinn Theo dropped another
bombshell by interviewing Mr. Jason Thor
Hall's ex roommate as well as the person
who was in charge of his quality
assurance work at Blizzard.
>> Hi, my name is Cynthia Hall. I go by
Ludiana online. I am a lifelong artisan
cosplayer. I worked for 5 years at
Blizzard and then eight years at Twitch.
And I happened to work with Pirate
Software at Blizzard as his wrangler on
Diablo 3. And what she had to say about
Thor was shocking, but not all
surprising at this point. According to
Cynthia, Jason was straight up bad at
his job. He would constantly slack off
and browse Reddit all day. And even when
he did work, Cynthia often had to come
in and correct his mistakes. So, we're
talking dealing with all the spawns in
the game, all the boss testing, having
to do all the smoke tests whenever there
were new builds. That's end to end. Make
a character run through to skeleton king
kill. Like, that's just testing the
builds. Um, whatever the task was for
the day, it could just be spawning
different monsters and testing their
apexes to see how they perform that
easy. But he would just kind of create a
character and idle in the client and
then read it. That's literally what he
did. He sat in front of me and I was
assigning the tasks. So, not only did I
see the work he was not doing, I saw
what he was doing instead.
>> Worst of all, when Cynthia complained
about his behavior to the higherups,
nothing happened simply because Thor's
father was also quite high up in the
company. The same father, mind you,
whose birthday is not even an
afterthought for Thor these days.
>> Birthday and you missed it. You didn't
call me. Neither did your brother. You
guys both ignored me for my birthday.
>> That isn't true. I saved text.
>> No, you did not.
>> [ __ ] That was last year.
>> [ __ ] I'm
>> I got nothing.
>> You told You sent me one last year.
>> Did I send you one last year? Am I a
shitty son? Oh man,
>> it was last. Wow.
>> But that's only the tip of the iceberg.
His memorable moments at the company
also included him yelling at his
co-workers for not playing like elite
gamers for a charity event. I was on his
team for a league tournament and he
screamed at our team for um apparently
not gearing correctly to counter the
other team cuz we we were just that bad
and it's not like we were losing so so
early because we we all played League
regularly. It was not that big of a deal
and we were all sleepd deprived. It was
very early in the morning after an
overnight of playing games and we're
like seriously dude you were raging at
everybody like our entire team. He was
just yelling across the floor at
everybody.
>> It's a charity event, correct? It was a
children's charity event.
>> But all of that pales in comparison to
what he was like as a roommate
>> that I came home and went into the
kitchen. All the dishes everywhere. Like
the pans still food in them on the
stove. [ __ ] everywhere. Food countertops
everything. Like it was not disgusting
sty but it was very just a [ __ ] mess.
>> Worst of all, when he eventually did
leave Cynthia's apartment, what she
found in his room was nothing short of
disgusting. When he finally did move
out, I wish I had um saved pictures of
the state of his room. He had cleaned
nothing. So, I had to clean everything
by hand. There was like I don't know
what on the walls in his bedroom. And
you're just going to have to like take
my word for this. I don't know if it was
snot or something else just like wiped
here and there on the walls and more of
the like random gray stuff just spots
and things.
>> Now, these stories are from years ago.
Unfortunately, from what we've seen of
his game's progress, he still hasn't
outgrown his slacking habits. It just
makes you wonder how much more negative
stuff about Thor will come out before
the internet just moves on, just like
only JS, who's also continuing to fall
into the realm of internet obscurity.
Click the video on screen to find out
why.