Advertisement

Machinima's YouTube gaming channel has effectively disappeared

"Seven-plus years of work... lost to the sands of time."

Machinima's YouTube gaming channel has been essentially scrubbed from the internet, as most videos on the site have been set to private and unplayable. Neither video creators nor users of the channel were notified, Kotaku reported, so the news sent a shockwave around the gaming and streaming communities. "Wow, they finally went ahead and deleted everything we've done," tweeted Ricky Hayberg, aka @RickyFTW. "Seven-plus years of work... lost to the sands of time #RIPMachinima."

The last several years have been pretty eventful for Machinima. It was acquired in 2016 by Warner Digital Networks, which was in turn bought by AT&T in the summer of 2018. The channel was subsequently shuttled over to AT&T's Fullscreen, a service operated by Otter Media.

"We are focused on creating new content with the Machinima team, which will be distributed on new channels to be announced in the coming months," Otter Media told Kotaku. "In the meantime the Machinima network of creator channels continues to showcase the talents of the network. As part of this focus on new content, we have pivoted from distributing content on a handful of legacy operated channels."

Though Machinima's multi-channel network model has become increasingly irrelevant to YouTubers, the sudden cutoff was still rude for many creators. Jeremy Azevedo called it a "massive kick in the dick to everyone [who] ever contributed to those brands."