How Snoop Became Gaming’s Biggest Sellout
Snoop’s gaming arc says a lot about the industry...
“A message to Xbox One or Microsoft or whoever the f***, y'all f*** **server is f***** wack, man. Y’all gonna let me switch to Playstation if you’re not gonna get this shit fixed.”
Snoop Dogg was once gaming’s coolest celebrity. He fought in Def Jam, trashed Xbox’s servers, and even tried launching his own GTA game. He wasn’t just another celebrity - he was a real rage-quitting gamer.
“Fuck this shit, fucking bad, fuck this shit man…”
But somehwere along the way, Snoop changed from gaming’s biggest icon to gaming’s biggest sellout. His cameos got weirder. His skins were locked behind pay-to-spins. And his own game studio? As shady as its Fortnite maps.
While it’s easy to call Snoop gaming’s biggest sellout, this video isn’t just about him. It’s about what the industry as a whole has become: Gaming isn’t about good gameplay anymore. It’s about who sells it best. And to understand how we got here, we just need to look at the one who sells it best - Mr. Snoop D-O-Double-G.
Snoop always knew the game. Here is what he said:
"For years, we watched the gaming industry take our likeness, take our culture, give us a few dollars, and make $100 million. That ain’t cool no more.”
But instead of fighting it, he became the blueprint for it. From adult films, food, sports, weed, wine and Bollywood, Snoop was everywhere. But nothing made him more money than gaming.
Which started all the way back in 2004, when EA milked him for Def Jam, Activision for True Crime, and Bandai Namco for Tekken, each slapping his name on their game. Did Snoop have any real connection to these games? No. But putting Snoop in a game was a cheat code for making it look cool. Snoop even tried launching his own GTA-style game. Big names, big budget, even a movie deal lined up. But it flopped before it even began. While Snoop probably didn’t know that making games is hard, he quickly learned there was an easier way to cash in - just act like a gamer. The rest will follow. And follow it did…
Snoop crowned himself the commissioner of the Hip Hop Gaming League, bringing the biggest names, and biggest sponsors, all banking on Snoop to take gaming to the “next level.” But that next level never came. The league flopped as quickly as it came.
So with his game and league dead, Snoop’s gaming career should’ve been over. But luckily for him, gaming was about to change - not for the better, but for exactly what Snoop needed.
Around 2010, browser and mobile were taking over. Games with very little gameplay but very big profits. Suddenly, using celebrities to sell them was more valuable than ever. And who better to push cash grabs than the cash grab king himself? In what would become one of the most over-the-top marketing stunts in gaming history, Snoop’s gaming career was finally about to blow up.
“That money over there” was part of a marketing stunt for Mafia Wars, a Facebook game on life support. The company behind it, Zynga, paid Snoop to blow up a 4-ton armored truck to promote the game.
But all it did was making it the most-watched live stream of the year. And Snoop? Never played the game. Just like the next game.
Rayman Legends, a game for kids, couldn’t have been further from the blunt-smoking, gangsta rapping pimp that Snoop was. But here he was, sitting on a throne, talking about being a legend. Gamers didn’t love it. “Ubisoft needs to get their sh** together because this is a complete demographic mismatch,“ “I feel like I’ve learned more about Snoop than the actual game.”
Well, if we learned one thing is that Ubisoft rarely has a clue who they are marketing to. But Rayman was just the start. Next up was Snoop single-handedly rewriting World War history - one joint at a time.
Call of Duty has been obsessed with weed culture since forever. Long before Snoop showed up, the game was already turning players into something straight out of a dispensary, from Blunt Force, Blunt Fingers and Stoner’s Delight. That stuff just sells. So it came to no surprise when Activision rolled in the most famous stoner on the planet.
First, they added a voice pack in Ghosts.
“Ballistic vest ready, those are some fine ass threads. You got that Spitfire drawn now”
Super cool stuff, because what’s more immersive than getting tactical orders in a California drawl?
Well, maybe Call of Duty Vanguard?
Because that’s when Snoop started shooting atomic breath or super scary red lasers out of his mouth. And the developers were convinced:
“It is truly the most immersive call of duty experience i've ever played.”
Yeah the most immersive one ever. Because war isn’t won with tanks, strategy or bombs - it’s won with Snoop’s smoke-powered supremacy.
From Warzone to Modern Warfare, Activision and Snoop milked each other for all it was worth.
While some gamers loved it, others looked past the smoke…
A clown indeed. But a very rich one. While Activision never revealed his paycheck, looking at their sales numbers, Snoop’s deals were almost certainly in the 7-figure range, because, you know, “the dogfather always wins.”
But cashing in on CoD was just the beginning. While Snoop was selling skins, he was also streaming - or least pretending to.
In 2018, he streamed the survival game SOS…or so it seemed.
“Gimme these shrooms, I’m f***ing high, man.”
What was remarkable was he played the game without hands. Turns out someone else was playing for him. But it didn’t matter. The stream wasn’t about gaming - it was a paid promo stunt for a game that nobody remembers.
Then came the Gangsta Gaming League - another “esports org” that was really just a cannabis ad. Sponsored by Merry Jane, it was just Snoop and friends getting high while playing Madden. No tournaments. No pro players. Just another branding play, that “will most definitely allow the use of cannabis." Of course, it faded as fast as they roll their joints.
And then, there was Twitch - where Snoop set a record for not streaming. He rage-quit Madden, left his stream running for seven hours, and never looked back. Fans spammed his chat but he didn’t care.
Years later, he even joked: “I had a bad track record on Twitch for-- what you call it, rage quitting? Yeah. So to all of the young creators and gamers out there, don't be a sore loser. Don't rage quit. HAHAHAH…”
He surely stopped the rage quit, but he sure as hell didn’t stop cashing in.
Yeah, his next hundred-million dollar move was Web3. In 2022, he dove into metaverse, with The Sandbox, a so-called "game" that was really just overpriced digital land and NFTs wrapped in hype. And Snoop? He wasn’t just in it - he was the product.
First, he got his own space—the Snoopverse, where fans could buy land and exclusive Snoop NFTs. One buyer even dropped $450,000 just to be his virtual neighbor. And for an extra $20K? You’d get some premium Snoop NFTs.
Of course, you did Snoop. People spent hundreds of thousands just to be your virtual neighbor. But when the NFT bubble popped, Snoopverse became a ghost town. And Snoop? He did what he always does: He took his cut and dipped. Because as he once admitted himself:
Translation? It was never about the metaverse. It was about cashing in on a trend. And when the money dried up, so did Snoop. But if you thought his Web3 hustle was bad, just wait until you see what happened when he tried running an esports league. Again!
Yup, Snoop was now part of one of the best esports teams in the world. A billion-dollar esports empire built on hype, trickshots, and influencer culture. They had the biggest gaming creators, the wildest sponsorship deals, and now? They had Snoop Dogg. Not just as a partner, but as FaZe Snoop, an official content creator and board member.
FaZe sold it as a game-changing move. Snoop himself hyped it up: "The youth identifies with their brand and that's something my son Cordell knew, which is why he brought us together.”
Translation: It’s just another branding play. And the timing was perfect - because just months later, FaZe Clan went public. A $1 billion IPO. FaZe stock was soaring, investors were lining up, and Snoop? He got 320,000 shares, valued at nearly $4 million.
But behind the scenes? Faze was bleeding. Investors pulled out, the stock crashed below $1, and the billion-dollar dream was over.
And Snoop? He quietly resigned, “effective immediately.”
His seven months of boardroom service earned him just $50k.
FaZe thought they were getting a gaming legend. But all they got a marketing stunt. And when the money ran out? So did Snoop. But if you thought his esports career was a disaster—his next gaming project was even worse. A gaming company so dead, even Fortnite couldn’t save it.
Death Row Games. Snoop’s new publishing label to “elevate diverse creators” and “give a home to minority developers.” That was the pitch. A noble one I must say. But behind the scenes, they’re not really publishing games. They’re just building branded Fortnite maps, as part of their partnership with Fortnite’s Unreal Editor, a tool that lets anyone make custom Fortnite maps. That’s not giving a home to minority developers. That’s just repackaging an already existing tool.
As Cordell, Snoop’s son said himself:
“We bring the culture, we bring the eyeballs, and the awareness. We don’t know this gaming stuff. We just wanna lean back and learn from the experts.”
But, lo and behold, when actually taking a look at their maps, they are as dead as the name of their game publishing company.
But hey, at least Snoop himself is in Fortnite. To really push the hype, Epic Games gave him his own skin and his his own Fortnite week. And to announce it all, they arranged a full Times Square takeover, the perfect branding moment, watched by millions of people. And what did Snoop say about it?
“I want to see how good you are in Fortnite!” (Streamer)
“I ain't good at all; like, that's what that ain't my forte. I'm better at, you know, being the characters and letting people play with my characters and showing me how good I could be.”
Sure Snoop. Whatever helps you sleep at night. Because at this point, he didn’t need to play games, he just needed to show up. Who cares about good gameplay when you have celebrities putting their name on it. Which is exactly why, when it came time for gaming’s biggest night, they didn’t honor the industry’s best. They gave the stage to Snoop.
The Game Awards. A stage meant to honor the best developers, the most grounbreaking games, the future of the industry. And yet, in 2024, Snoop was the headliner. Not because he made a game. Not because he innovated anything. But because he and his son Cordell announced their yet again oh so nobly mission of Death Row games, to “create a hip-hop gaming universe that can stand beside some of these nominees tonight.” A bold statement for a company that’s as dead as its Fortnite maps.
And after Snoop announced the winner (Hell Divers 2), he dropped his new song that not even the music industry had heard yet.
No wonder gamers are getting “annoyed of seeing him everywhere”, saying he made “a caricature of himself,” and how “he'd promote diarrhea if he could make a buck out of it.” Meanwhile, while the gaming industry struggles, budgets get slashed and studios shut down…millions are still being funneled into celebrity cameos, Fortnite skins, and gambling tie-ins.
And Snoop? He’s just the symptom of what the industry has become:
Hype over substance.
Money over art.
Spectacle over player satisfaction.
It’s about keeping eyeballs glued, wallets open, and headlines rolling.
And when you see Snoop in one of his music videos shooting Trump in the head, only to watch him perform at a Trump event years later, you realize something: Integrity doesn’t sell. Visibility however, does.
But to leave you with one last thought: Maybe the biggest sellout isn’t Snoop afterall, or even the industry. Maybe it was us gamers, for letting it happen.