#RIPMachinima

January 19, 2019 2:00 PM

Entire Machinima YouTube Channel Set To Private [Kotaku] “With no public announcement or advanced warning to many creators, the entire Machinima Youtube channel was effectively wiped from the internet recently. All videos on the channel are now private, making them unable to view. [...] News of the videos began to spread yesterday, but it’s unclear when the switch to private happened. Many creators seemed not to have been aware that their videos would be set to private. “Otter Media really just went and deleted Machinima, Happy Hour, Respawn, Realm, Prime, Inside Gaming, ETC, everything.” Jeremy Azevedo, a former creator and employee of Machinima tweeted after learning about the news. Other former creators were shocked to find years of videos now gone.”

• Machinima Creators Just Got A Letter Telling Them That They’re Now Part Of Fullscreen [TubeFilter]

“Last month, Otter Media announced a layoff of 10% of its staff amid a reorganization that saw it bring gaming digital network Machinima under its auspices. The reorg occurred as AT&T — the parent company of both Otter and Machinima — continues to pare down its digital properties in the wake of its Time Warner acquisition last summer. Now, according to a letter circulating on social media, Machinima creators and select staffers will be joining the Fullscreen network — which is another Otter property. Last month, Otter said that its direct-to-consumer brands like Rooster Teeth would be folded into its anime and geek-centric Ellation division alongside Machinima. However, an email addressed to Machinima creators from Fullscreen’s general manager, Beau Bryant, would seem to suggest otherwise.”

posted by Fizz (17 comments total)

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posted by Fizz at 2:00 PM on January 19, 2019

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posted by deadaluspark at 2:05 PM on January 19, 2019

Culture isn't property and corporations aren't librarians or archivists. We should never lose sight of the fact that someday Youtube is going to shut down.
posted by mhoye at 2:50 PM on January 19, 2019 [67 favorites]

This is the inevitable cost of “free”.
posted by chavenet at 2:56 PM on January 19, 2019 [10 favorites]

We should never lose sight of the fact that someday Youtube is going to shut down.

It seems inevitable.
posted by otherchaz at 4:37 PM on January 19, 2019 [9 favorites]

Damn I want to put some flowers on those graves.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 5:03 PM on January 19, 2019 [1 favorite]

“As part of this focus on new content, we have pivoted from distributing content on a handful of legacy operated channels.”

focus ... pivot ... legacy. bingo!
posted by russm at 5:46 PM on January 19, 2019 [4 favorites]

This is why I use youtube-dl, why I'm proud of my more obscure DVDs like the early Red vs Blue ones (and Mindcandy, the BBS Documentary, & Once Upon Atari), and why when my wife and I buy music it's on CD.

If you really like something like this, you want control of a copy that cannot be revoked.
posted by krisjohn at 6:21 PM on January 19, 2019 [23 favorites]

Grrrr.
posted by doctornemo at 8:06 PM on January 19, 2019

Even if they didn't plan on further development, why on earth wouldn't they leave up a channel with that many videos, views, and subscribers as a passive income stream? It's free money for zero additional work, with the added bonus of not pissing off a whole lot of people.
posted by Rhaomi at 11:24 PM on January 19, 2019 [9 favorites]

This is why I use youtube-dl

YouTube are now using the MPEG-DASH format for new uploads, this means that for many videos to get the full quality you have to download the audio and video separately and recombine them.
By default youtube-dl will pick the best quality combined Audio/Video stream which for DASH usually means a lower quality video.
posted by Lanark at 5:03 AM on January 20, 2019

By default youtube-dl will pick the best quality combined Audio/Video stream which for DASH usually means a lower quality video.

"Since the end of April 2015 and version 2015.04.26, youtube-dl uses -f bestvideo+bestaudio/best as the default format selection"

So the default for the past 4 years is to pick the best distinct audio and video streams and merge them, or if distinct streams aren't available to pick the best combined stream.
posted by russm at 5:40 AM on January 20, 2019 [5 favorites]

There is an open issue about the youtube-dl format problems since 7 Sep 2017.
Until that gets resolved, the only way to get the full quality for some videos is to manually select the video size.
posted by Lanark at 6:29 AM on January 20, 2019 [4 favorites]

why on earth wouldn't they leave up a channel with that many videos, views, and subscribers

It makes no sense as a business decision, but perfect sense as an insecure dick-measuring decision: Someone at Otter is planning to launch their own "new" series which would otherwise have been forced to actually compete with the existing library.

They owned Machinima, but they didn't create or control it and thus found it inherently untrustworthy.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 7:37 AM on January 20, 2019 [2 favorites]

This strikes me as one of those marketing decisions like New Coke, which will be revoked, and then they’ll pretend it never happened. Because it’s insane to throw away free money and tens of millions of subscribers, and I cannot think of a single good reason, from just the business side, as to why a company would do this.
posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 9:51 PM on January 20, 2019

For a while, when you made a video private on YouTube and later made it public again, its publishing date changed to the date you made it public. I don't think it does dates like that anymore, but I don't know for sure. If it does work that way, all those old videos will appear new again with new dates each time they re-release -- with comments (where allowed) retaining their elder dates.
posted by filtergik at 4:03 AM on January 21, 2019

it’s insane to throw away free money

My guess is that the department was laid off and someone set everything to private on their way out the door.
posted by Lanark at 12:53 PM on January 21, 2019