Machinima YouTube Channel Shuts Down

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Ahh Machinima, the long forgotten son of YouTube. At its height the channel packed well over 12 million subscribers, however on Friday 18th January it seems that its owners, Otter Media, a subsidiary of AT&T, have finally pulled the plug on the “legacy operated channel”, with all of its content being set to 'private' and no longer available for public viewing.

There’s been no official statement from its parent company on the decision to pull the plug from the legendary YouTube channel, however we’re a little confused.

Even if new video was sparse, it makes little sense as to why all of the monetized content was pulled, its replay value is still effectively quite high.

With the channel garnering near enough 100,000 views plus a day over the last few months, earning an estimated £20-£320 ($26-$410 USD) in ad revenue alone (dependent on adblock level), that’s still a sizable portion of money, for content which is effectively hosted and maintained for free.

Founded in 2000, with its YouTube channel launching in ‘06, Machinima was first bought out by Time Warner back in 2016. In 2018, AT&T acquired Time Warner, and rebranded the company into WarnerMedia, before handing over Machinima to its subsidiary, OtterMedia, an internal media production company that also looks after Crunchyroll, Rooster Teeth, and other brands.

In December Variety reported that Machinima would be undergoing a reorganization, and its staff merging internally with Otter Media, with the brand running as legacy content across Otter Media’s other media channel solutions. The following reorganization in December lead to 10% of the staff being let go. #RIPMachinima

Zak Storey
Zak Storey

As Associate Editor of Tom's Hardware's prestigous British division, Zak specializes in system building, case reviews and peripherals, and has a particular penchant for liquid-cooling. He's also a lover of all things Viking/Scandinavian (thus the poor attempt at a beard).

4 Comments Comment from the forums
  • spentshells
    Too bad, I found lots of cool music on that channel.
    Reply
  • cryoburner
    Perhaps AT&T is planning on moving the content to a streaming video service of their own in the near future. It looks like they announced a couple months back that they would be launching a new streaming video service in late 2019, so they might be planning on uploading these videos as filler there. That, or they simply don't want their content generating revenue for a competitor's service.
    Reply
  • jimmysmitty
    I am not sure that I feel bad for them. After hearing of how badly they treated some content creators.

    https://www.accursedfarms.com/forums/topic/2525-escape-from-machinima-part-2/

    He was dragged around a lot. What started as a good channel seems to have just moved into the same as anything else, just money hungry jerks.
    Reply
  • Reginald_Peebottom
    That revenue projection is peanuts if they had to actually pay for staff to manage it to say nothing of the cost of acquiring the IP to begin with. Clearly, this is a case of buyer not knowing how to manage the IP or having inept management acquired.

    Of course, it could just be that this was a flash in the pan for tech entertainment and people grew tired of the genre.
    Reply