On April 20, 2026, Chaz Marler of the YouTube channel "Game Night Picks" filed a complaint in Lane County Circuit Court in Oregon against Rodney Smith, owner of the "Watch It Played" YouTube channel, stating in the complaint that:
Defendant [Smith] published Plaintiff [Marler]'s proprietary data alongside false statements across multiple platforms and directly contacted Plaintiff's contractual counterparties to destroy Plaintiff's livelihood. Defendant obtained the proprietary data through credentials granted during the partnership. Plaintiff's niche industry goodwill, which he had contributed to the partnership and continued to build as his principal employment over years, was suddenly irreparably damaged.
The events that Marler refers to happened on February 9, 2026, when Smith released a document and a video in which he accused the owner of "Game Night Picks", a.k.a. Marler, of using YouTube's "YouTube Advertising" feature to boost the viewer count on videos released in November and December 2025.
In an article about Smith's accusations, I noted that the viewer count matters because, to quote Smith, "Early in 2025, the owner of Game Night Picks adopted a 'per view' fee structure for ads sold on their channel." The more views a video had, the more an advertising sponsor would pay, but Smith claimed that "the videos Game Night Picks released using 'YouTube Advertising' resulted in ~90% of the total viewers leaving the video within its first minute — well before the publisher's ad could be shown to them."
The complaint, which Marler forwarded to Board Game Beat in a redacted form "to prevent doxxing" and conceal financial details, states that these accusations, among others, are false:
Plaintiff did not adopt the per-video-view fee structure "early in 2025." It has been in use since August 2020 for ads sold on both Watch It Played and TableTop Media Makers [another site owned by Marler].
Defendant knew the per-video-view billing structure was standard practice because Defendant himself used the same structure for ads sold on his own Watch It Played videos throughout the partnership.
Additionally:
Defendant's publications included a viewer-retention graph taken from Game Night Picks' private YouTube account data without Plaintiff's knowledge or consent. Defendant never had access to Game Night Picks' actual promotions data. The video Defendant selected as his example showed a 3% retention rate, but Defendant omitted that such drop-offs are a normal pattern for long-duration YouTube videos. Plaintiff's actual retention rates across various videos ranged from 3% to 43%, including rates of 11%, 14%, 17%, 29%, 33%, and 42%. Defendant selected the single lowest-performing example and presented it as representative of Plaintiff's work.
On top of that, regarding invoices to publishers who purchased ads on Game Night Picks during the period it used the "YouTube Advertising" program, the complaint states:
Defendant's statement falsely implies that Plaintiff offered to provide discounts only after being confronted by Defendant, and that absent Defendant's intervention, no discounts would have been issued. In fact, Plaintiff had already proactively applied discounts to every invoice that had become due before the December 18 conversation took place.
What was that "December 18 conversation"? According to the complaint, that was the date that Marler and Smith agreed "to cease their collaboration and end their business relationship".
That business relationship had started in March 2020 when they, according to the complaint, "entered into a collaborative business relationship involving the joint production, management, and monetization of YouTube content related to board games". The complaint devotes a few dozen paragraphs to "The Partnership", presumably both to emphasize that this was not an employer-employee relationship and to establish that Lane County Circuit Court in Oregon is the proper location for this case to be heard given that the "Defendant voluntarily entered into an ongoing business relationship with Plaintiff, an Oregon resident, and maintained that relationship for approximately six years".
Following Smith's February 9, 2026 publications, the complaint states that Smith cancelled the third of three already-scheduled videos that Marler had produced and Smith went back on an announced plan to close the "Watch It Played" Patreon account, which the complaint says was set up by the two jointly with an income split of "Defendant 25%, Plaintiff 25%, with the remaining 50% allocated to two other team members (20% each) and a 10% reserve".
On this same date, the complaint states that "Defendant contacted Plaintiff's contractual counterparties (board game publishers who had purchased advertising from Plaintiff) by email, sending them Plaintiff's private business data and characterizations of Plaintiff's business practices."
In addition to the partnership still having multiple issues unresolved as of February 9 — YouTube AdSense revenue from collaborative videos, outstanding invoices, etc. — the complaint details losses Marler says he's accrued since that date, including publishers cancelling scheduled ads, publishers requesting refunds, a collaborator cancelling a scheduled recording session, a potential investor ceasing further discussions, a drop in YouTube subscribers, and stress, anxiety, and other physical ailments.
The complaint states that Smith's statements are a source of "ongoing harm" and efforts to correct the record have not worked:
As of the date of this complaint, Defendant's text document remains publicly accessible via Dropbox link, and Defendant's YouTube video remains publicly accessible on the Watch It Played channel. The harm to Plaintiff's reputation and business is ongoing.
On February 22, 2026, Plaintiff, through counsel, delivered to Defendant a formal demand for correction or retraction of defamatory statements under ORS 31.215, by certified mail, return receipt requested, the method of delivery prescribed by the statute. The demand identified six specific false and defamatory statements and demanded their removal, correction, or retraction within the time prescribed by ORS 31.215(2). Defendant collected the certified mailing on March 25, 2026. Defendant failed to correct or retract any of the identified statements.
The complaint ends with four "claims for relief" — breach of fiduciary duty of loyalty; false light; defamation; and declaratory judgment — and asks for the relief to address economic damages (both incurred and future), non-economic damages, injunctive relief (which involves removing Defendant's publications and issuing a retraction and correction), declaratory relief (over the status of "confidential information"), and costs and attorney fees. Regarding future losses, the complaint states:
[I]n the more than two months since Defendant's February 9, 2026 publications, Plaintiff has been unable to sell a single new sponsorship and his sponsorship revenue has fallen to zero. Plaintiff therefore seeks the full pre-publication going-concern value of the business as economic damages.
The complaint argues that this outcome was what Smith intended:
Defendant knew his publications would devastate Plaintiff's livelihood and chose to proceed. On February 8, 2026, the day before Defendant published his accusations, Defendant's mother asked him: "But do you have to ruin his life?" Defendant's response was that the harm to Plaintiff was the cost, and he had to do it. On February 9, 2026, after publishing, Defendant told three of the parties' team members what he had done and recounted this exchange with his mother. Defendant chose this course despite the parties' agreement to separate amicably through a planned series of joint videos; despite six years of partnership in which both parties shared profits, managed the business together, and represented themselves as partners; and despite Plaintiff having already applied discounts to the affected invoices before Defendant raised the issue. Defendant abandoned the agreed separation plan and instead used confidential partnership data as a weapon to destroy Plaintiff's livelihood and reputation in the community they had built together.
As of April 23, 2026, the Oregon Judicial Department reports that this complaint has not been served to Smith. Asked for comment by the Beat, Smith wrote, "I deny the claims and intend to defend myself, but it is in my interest to avoid any further statements regarding the substance of the allegations."
