Otter Media kills off a chunk of YouTube history, as Machinima channel is set to private

Long running multi-channel YouTube network Machinima has pulled the plug on its entire YouTube channel, deleting every video in the companies history, all the way back to the 2006.

It’s a surprise not just to the channel’s 12m subscribers, but also to several of the creators, including celebrities like Felicia Day, who had produced a Dragon Age webseries for the channel.

It’s a brutal move, killing off hundreds of videos from the early days of gaming Youtube. Machinima and related productions like Happy Hour, Respawn, Realm, Prime, Inside Gaming and many others launched since Machinima was founded in 2000 and opened up their YouTube channel in 2006.

https://twitter.com/feliciaday/status/1086763938295894016

It appears that all of the videos have been set to private rather than outright purged, and Otter Media has issued a statement to gaming website Kotaku, claiming that they are “focused on creating new content with the Machinima team” which doesn’t touch on exactly why 13 years of internet history has been tossed into the metaphorical toilet.

“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.” said Otter Media’s spokesperson. “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.”

With the videos set to private, this could be reversed, but the idea that a large chunk of the internet’s collective history can be canned on a whim. Perhaps you had better start burning your favourite Memes to disk, just in case.

We’ve reached out to Fullscreen Media for comment, if we get anything back we’ll update this story.

Pour one out for Machinima on Twitter at @TrustedReviews