Apple / games / PEWDIEPIE'S TUBER SIMULATOR
REVIEW
PewDiePie's Tuber Simulator is the YouTuber-fan game that survived its YouTuber.
Outerminds' clicker-style YouTube simulator launched in 2016 at the height of PewDiePie's cultural reach and is, in 2026, still on the App Store. The game is fine. The cultural moment is long gone.
BY THE APP COMRADE DESK · MAY 8, 2026 · 3 MIN READ
PewDiePie's Tuber Simulator
OUTERMINDS INC.
OUR SCORE
6.0
APPLE
★ 4.9
PRICE
Free
PewDiePie’s Tuber Simulator is a strange product to review in 2026. The game launched in late 2016 at the absolute peak of PewDiePie’s cultural reach — the era of 50 million subscribers, daily Edgar the dog appearances, and the Bro Army as the largest YouTube fan community in the world. The game was a real cultural moment, climbing the iOS top-charts, generating coverage in mainstream media, and producing the kind of branded-content success that rarely actually works.
A decade later, both the YouTuber and the cultural moment have receded. PewDiePie himself stepped substantially back from public-facing content after 2022, the YouTube creator-economy has fragmented into many smaller niches, and the kind of mass-market YouTuber-fandom that fuelled Tuber Simulator’s original audience has dispersed across TikTok, Instagram, and the various platform-specific creator economies. The game survives. The audience for it does not.
What’s left is a competent clicker / idle game with PewDiePie-themed flavor that means something to ex-fans and almost nothing to new players. Outerminds has continued to update the game, the mechanics work as designed, and the time-capsule quality is, for users who remember the era, genuinely interesting. For everyone else, the game’s references to “Brofist” and “Edgar” land as opaque cultural artifacts. The honest review is that the product is fine and the audience for it has mostly moved on.
PewDiePie's Tuber Simulator is the rare game that's outlived its celebrity moment. The clicker mechanics still work.
FEATURES
PewDiePie's Tuber Simulator is the YouTube-creator-themed clicker / idle game from Outerminds, originally released 2016 in collaboration with the (then-massively-popular) YouTuber PewDiePie (Felix Kjellberg). Core gameplay: simulate growing a YouTube channel — record videos, upload, gain subscribers, earn in-game currency, upgrade equipment, decorate the studio, unlock new video categories.
Major systems: video-creation loop (tap to record, multi-tap to "edit", upload), studio decoration (Wallpaper, furniture, equipment upgrades), guest YouTubers (cameos from other YouTubers), achievements, daily challenges, and the broadcast / "viewer" simulation that mimics viral video dynamics.
Free with in-app purchases. T-Bux (premium currency) skips timers, unlocks decorations, and accelerates progress. Ads and IAPs both present.
PewDiePie himself has been substantially less present in public-facing media since his 2022 marriage and parental-leave announcement; the game's content updates have continued without him. Outerminds maintains the game.
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED
The clicker / idle mechanics are competently designed. The video-creation loop is satisfying for the genre, the upgrade progression provides clear short-term goals, and the studio-decoration meta-progression layer is the kind of cosmetic reward most clicker games handle worse than this one.
The PewDiePie-specific cultural references (callbacks to early Brofist content, Edgar the dog, the Bro Army) are nostalgic for ex-fans of the YouTuber. For users who specifically associate PewDiePie with their teenage internet years, the game captures something the broader internet has largely moved past.
ROOM TO IMPROVE
The cultural moment that gave the game its cultural mass is long gone. PewDiePie's broader internet presence has receded substantially since 2022; new players in 2026 don't bring the cultural context the game's references assume. For someone who didn't follow PewDiePie in 2016-2020, much of the game's flavor lands as opaque references.
The clicker / idle design is dated. The mobile-clicker-game category has moved on substantially since 2016 — the modern competitive clickers (AdVenture Capitalist, Cookie Clicker mobile, NGU Idle) all offer deeper mechanics and more sophisticated progression curves. Tuber Simulator hasn't evolved much.
PewDiePie's own historical controversies (the 2017 anti-Semitism clip, the 2018 N-word incident, both substantially apologized for at the time) are part of the cultural baggage the game carries. Some users will find the brand association uncomfortable in ways the game itself can't address.
CONCLUSION
Install if you specifically have nostalgia for the 2016-era PewDiePie phenomenon and want a competent clicker / idle game wrapped in that cultural moment. Don't install expecting either modern clicker-game design or current cultural relevance. The game is fine; the moment is long over. For the audience that specifically wanted this experience, it's still here, eight years later.