Posted in: Games, Video Games, YouTube | Tagged: machinima, youtube

Machinima Privatized Over a Decade of Videos From YouTube

Published Sun, 20 Jan 2019 10:40:43 -0600

Well, it wouldn't be the Machinima way if the company didn't give everyone who ever worked there one final slap in the face for 'ol times sake. Last week, the word came down that Machinima as an entity was no more. The channel and its content were being discontinued and Otter Media would be changing everything over to Fullscreen, one of their entities. So people were kind of curious what would become of the channel and all of the content that was made by some of the most prominent gamers and content creators since YouTube started. We got our answer yesterday as the company made over a decade's worth of videos private, essentially wiping them clean from the platform.

Kotaku got a statement from the company yesterday saying "As part of this focus on new content, we have pivoted from distributing content on a handful of legacy operated channels." But it doesn't really change the fact that there's a ton of history from this company that's now essentially been tossed into a vault never to be seen again from people like Seananners, Hutch, Mr. Sark, members of Funhaus before they went to Rooster Teeth, and so on. Considering that few people who worked for the company had kind words about them after leaving, even in the aftermath of the change with 20/20 hindsight on social media, it doesn't seem all that shocking that the new parent company didn't make an effort to sell old content to those creators or at least come to some kind of arrangement to let them continue airing.

It's a sad day and a lot of lost memories for those of us who watched the channel. Especially for an entire generation of gamers who migrated from entitles like G4 and found it to be a new home for gaming news and other videos. But let's be real… Doesn't this feel like the most Machinima thing they could have done?

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