Pepe the frog can’t catch a break without being banned for something. We’ve seen this with Apple banning all things Pepe related on the App Store and now we see the same thing to a certain extent happen on Steam, except Matt Furie and his lawyer have stepped in this time.

According to publication site comicbook.com we learn that Steam, to a certain extent, will no longer tolerate Pepe the frog due to Matt Furie’s DMCA strike, which joins his other legal notices that apply to Reddit, Amazon, and more.

The publication site lists one of those such companies as being the popular PC gaming platform Steam. Furie and his lawyer have sent the platform or service a notice to remove Pepe the frog emoticon from its libraries.

The publication site posted up the disclaimer as to why the Frog is now missing from said department along with an image to back up the disclaimer:

“Emoticon art currently unavailable due to a DMCA takedown notice submitted on behalf of Matt Furie.”

The site also posted up why Furie and his lawyer feel the way that they do about the frog after they found the “harmful” posts depicting Pepe. This is what they had to say:

“A Steam user let us know that there were Pepe images being sold on the site, and that they were being used on that site by people in connection with hateful speech. We asked Steam to take those down, and it appears that it has done that.”

The act of Furie and his Lawyer blocking people regarding others using Pepe as “hate speech” propelled after Apple banned Pepe the frog on the App Store starting on June 9th, 2017. Around two weeks afterwards, Furie started a Kickstarter page to “revive Pepe” that stated the following information:

“Before Pepe the Frog was a meme designated a hate symbol by the Anti-Defamation League, he began his life as a blissfully stoned frog in my comic book Boy’s Club where he enjoyed a simple life of snacks, soda and pulling his pants all the way down to go pee. Boy’s Club debuted in 2006, Pepe became a meme around 2010, then stuck around the internet long enough to become an institutionally recognized hate mascot. Needless to say it’s a nightmare so I killed him off. But now I’d like to bring him back, and I’d like to ask your help in funding a new zine celebrating a resurrected Pepe, one that shall shine a light in all this darkness and feel good again.”

 

-Matt Furie

Moreover, Furie went on to say on the Kickstarter page that…

“We understand there’s no way to fully control the internet or how people decide to use Pepe the Frog. Trying to control that would be a completely unreasonable goal. That said, the aim of this project is to positively resurrect Pepe through the creation of a brand new comic in the spirit of the original BOY’S CLUB.”

The true question here that should be addressed, is Furie doing exactly what he said he did not want to do and is trying to control the Internet because that would be an unreasonable goal?