I've heard some indie developers rage about him in private, mainly because he gave criticism of their game in a humorous fashion, I think. First of all, nobody likes having their game criticized or outright panned.
Secondly, nobody likes it when the person doing so is doing so from "on high," so to speak, as a really major force in the industry with no real external check or balance against them (I would argue that popular opinion was a check and balance and that if the reviews were not good or were just trolling devs, his popularity would not have been so high; but these are talking points I've heard.)
Thirdly, and perhaps most damningly, people like TotalBiscuit and the RPS crew have taken it upon themselves to be -- gasp -- entertaining rather than clinical n their reviews and other coverage. This can feel downright disrespectful if it's a game you've poured hundreds or thousands of your life into creating, and I'll admit that in some of the Valley coverage that RPS did, I got pretty pissed but kept it to myself. Even TB's video on Valley, which were recommending it and made me a lot of money, took some jabs at it that made me mad at the time.
Somewhere since 2011 I guess I figured out what these folks are up to. Basically the humor isn't disrespectful at all -- it's the tool of the trade. It's why a given youtuber is watched and another is not. Same for written sites. The humor has to be paired with keen insight and other instincts and talents, but there are some "dry, clinical" versions of TB and RPS that basically will never be as popular because they do unfunny, insightful deep dives. TB mostly didn't do super deep dives, except on industry topics, and his humor was a Python-esque way of talking about serious and insightful topics in an absurdist manner.
That took some getting used to on my part, and some devs -- indie and otherwise -- never have. That said, there are other reviewers or content creators out there that use the humor in an abusive way, and I still have a problem with them. I've never gotten the feeling of that from TB, even watching him "trash" some game.
We definitely shouldn't disrespect the dead for no reason, but there's also a limit to how much we should whitewash someone posthumously, too. In the case of TB, I don't feel like anything that is being said about him now isn't something that people were saying before he died, too. Assholes were assholes, fans were fans, and everyone else was somewhere else on the scale. In that, I am happy. His legacy seems intact, untarnished by either false praise or false negativity.
The main thing that I was concerned about was the fact that some people did speak only in private about their dislike of him because of fear of reprisal, and now that he can't "take revenge" for such sleights (not that I think he would have), I figured we'd see some dirt come out in the wash. As it turns out -- not so much as I'd thought might happen. That, again, makes me happy. He did a good job, and it was recognized by most people as such, and that's that.
I'm still getting over the fact that he's gone, but at least the legacy is there.
