Machinima Pulls All Content From YouTube

It’s a new era for Machinima, but that’s not really a good thing for all the content that they just deleted from their YouTube channel.

Machinima recently became a part of Fullscreen Media, and shortly thereafter the official YouTube channel has been essentially wiped clean. As you can see in the screenshot below, very few videos remain in their catalog and the ones that do happen to be official Machinima productions (via The Verge).

Thing is, most of the content here was created by independent creators as part of Machinima’s Creator’s banner. That means Happy Hour, Realm, Inside Gaming, Minecraft YouTube, and more are completely deleted, and unless the creators had backups it is just gone. That isn’t sitting well with many, who weren’t contacted at all about what Fullscreen Media (owner of Otter Media) was going to do.

An Otter Media representative told the Verge “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.”

Machinima creators did receive an email about Fullscreen and Otter purchasing Machinima, which also promised a smooth and efficient transition. Some are already balking at those words, especially due to the lack of communication on Machinima’s part after the purchase, but you can read a bit of the email below.

“As you may have heard, Machinima officially joined forces with Otter Media today to grow the company’s expertise super-serving the gamer and anime fan communities,” the email reads. “As part of this, Fullscreen (part of the Otter Media portfolio of companies) will be welcoming employees from the Machinima Creator team who have helped build that company into what it is today. As the General Manager of Fullscreen’s Creator division, I want to be the first to welcome you to our family and let you know we are thrilled to have you as the newest members of our talent roster, which includes top gaming creators like TFue, Ninja, Faze Rug, PopularMMOs and many more.”

Machinima’s YouTube page still has 12 million subscribers, so at this point, it would seem Otter Media does want to take advantage of that. Some of the issues seem to regard obtaining copyrights to the videos, and with so many to go through they thought it best just to purge. It remains to be seen if that was the best strategy.