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ON A LITTLE known YouTube channel, a breezy, British narrator is explaining the ins and outs of Doom: The Dark Ages’ story. Though not named, his voice may be familiar to video game fans as that of Mark Brown. The trouble is, Brown had nothing to do with the video.
Brown, who goes by Game Maker’s Toolkit, is a content creator and developer who has covered video game design for over a decade. His channel has 220 videos, broadcast to more than 1.65 million subscribers, where he gives in-depth explanations on things like puzzle mechanics in Blue Prince or addresses UI problems in The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom. (Brown has previously written for WIRED UK.)
The Doom video, posted to a channel called Game Offline Lore, is not Brown’s typical content. But the problem is actually bigger than that: Brown never actually narrated this video. Instead, he says, the creator of Game Offline Lore has used an AI version of his voice without his knowledge or consent. “The thought that someone else would do it in order to copy my persona in this way—it's just so weird and invasive,” he says. “It's kinda like plagiarism but more personal. It's not my work or my labor. It's a distinct part of who I am.”
