How Machinima Died (VIDEO SCRIPT)

Readers, one of the things I usually pride myself in here on Readus 101 is that I don’t really participate in YouTube drama. Except that one time.

Yes, I could’ve gotten multiple clicks and views on making a video explaining EXACTLY why Super Best Friends Play broke up

But that’s not my place, nor is there enough confirmed information for me to make such a claim and feel good about myself in the morning.

Yes, I could’ve recorded myself dissecting the racism and ignorance of PewDiePie and Logan Paul respectively

Which the closest I’ve done on said topic was make a skit about how to deal with people like that as opposed to talking about the subject directly

But as a black bisexual male who has lived through half of this first term of White House Fascism, I have declared - for mental health reasons - that it is not my job to explain racism and bigotry to privileged cis white folk that aren’t willing to listen ANYWAY.

But in the case of Machinima, /who on Saturday January 19th 2019 a LOT of people - both watchers and content contributors alike - discovered that every single one of their affiliated YouTube channels has either privated their content or straight-up REMOVED it./ https://kotaku.com/entire-machinima-youtube-channel-set-to-private-1831894744 

I’m sure I’m willing to make an exception here, because a lot of people are going “What the fuck is happening??”

You see, for those of you who didn’t know, Machinima the company was bought by Warner Brothers back in 2016, seeing it as a decent investment for pushing its DC Comics properties on film and television, along with it’s own video game catalogue. 

But it’s not like Warner Brothers was completely brand new in how to handle Machinima after the purchase; they had already invested TONS of money in the company in the years prior, /investing 24 million dollars in the company the year before the buyout and 18 million the year before that/ Machinima - Variety

Then everything changed when the fire nation attacked. And by fire nation, I mean AT&T bought Warner Brothers

This happened...just last year in 2018

At the same time Disney began its absorption of 20th Century Fox, one of the most recognizable and film industry pillars got bought, by a phone company. 

Just like how Comcast bought Universal Pictures and NBC nine years prior. And y’all still a fan of capitalism?

So with AT&T now owning Warner Brothers, which, in turn means owning Machinima, the company became a subsidiary of IT’S online media company, Otter Media

Who also owns Rooster Teeth, Crunchyroll, VRV and Fullscreen; the latter being where a lot of the Machinima contracts of content creators were shipped off to if they just didn’t outright terminate them.

/One of the creators in question being Maximilian Dood here on YouTube, who was let go abruptly like so many that were still associated with the company during the transition. He explains his situation in a video he posted on his channel if you want to know more./

And this only happened because before Otter Media took in Machinima, /Otter Media laid off 10% of it’s staff in order to reorganize and restructure it’s digital media properties. That meant letting go of people with redundant job titles, certain divisions of certain companies that haven’t proved to be profitable... Y’know, typical corporate shit./ https://variety.com/2018/digital/news/otter-media-layoffs-machinima-reorg-1203079823/

So when Machinima joined Otter Media while Otter Media is taking January of 2019 to clean house

Former employee of Machinima Lawrence Sonntag’s explanation regarding why all the content over the course of their YouTube channels is either privatized or straight up gone comes down to copyright

/Because so many creator contributors like Game Society and Two Best Friends Play had series on Machinima that involved so many different possible copyright claims and that it wouldn’t be cost-effective at all to verify everything they’ve absorbed from buying Machinima in the first place -- especially after laying off 10% of their staff over the course of all of the companies under their belt -- they figured the best course of action was to just get rid of it all./ Machinima - Destructoid

Which sucks. It sucks a LOT.

Now I don’t know what Otter Media’s plans with Machinima are moving forward.

/They have stated that they’re planning on launching new content on new YouTube channels under the Machinima name later on this year, and are still aiming to be creator-focused moving forward/ Machinima - Kotaku

But I dunno, personally that sounds very similar to the transition from SourceFed Nerd to NowThis Nerd

And while NowThis Nerd has been making some leeway into producing BETTER original content than when they first rebranded SourceFed Nerd, it was still off of the backs of the people that got it big enough for it to be profitable

So it’s hard to imagine that whatever Otter Media has planned for Machinima later on this year ISN’T going to end up the same way

Personally, while I understand WHY Otter Media did what they did with the Machinima based content, I feel like they went about it the wrong way.

Especially in regards to how they handled letting content creators know that they were either being dropped from the MCN or moved over to Fullscreen at such short notice; that doesn’t really bode well with establishing a connection with the peeps that may end up being your bread and butter in this venture

As far as the future of Machinima and the content we should expect from it in the months to come now that Otter Media has “cleaned house” for lack of better phrasing, we’ll just have to wait and see...