Watcher Entertainment’s decision to move off YouTube – and charge $6 per month for access to new series – prompted a major backlash among fans.
YouTube is getting really bad, so it’s difficult to blame them for leaving. I guess many people are oblivious to YouTube’s enshittification. However, as far as I know, most of Nebula’s creators are still on YouTube, and they have way more videos, so I’m not sure how these guys think this is going to work out. It will almost certainly arrest any growth they had.
I think this YouTube comment really explains the backlash very well.
The problem with this isn’t just that they’re paywalling their stuff. It’s the “why” that REALLY made this sting. They are guys that came from Buzzfeed. An online entity that was destroyed by over hiring, inefficient spending, and mismanagement. They have over 20 employees, in a MASSIVE office space, in one of the most expensive cities on earth, all to make shows that are literally two guys in a room goofing off the VAST majority of the time. They mismanaged their business, and instead of sucking it up, admitting they didn’t learn their lesson from Buzzfeed and downsizing, they decided to paywall all their content after having a patreon, adsense, a merch store, live events, and literal 5 minute ad reads on every video. Rather than accept the obvious conclusion, which is that they need to completely rethink their business model; they keep asking the audience to enable them.
They said they are going to keep their current library on YouTube for free, and then add any new content once it’s a month old.
After the backlash. Good on them for listening to their audience in the end, but it was a predictably stupid move.
I’ve enjoyed a few of the shows but won’t be paying $5.99/month for them. Just not worth it.
Ridiculous sensationalized headline evokes barely perceptible yawn.
One doesn’t lose close to 100k subs out of the thin air.
The amount of anger in the backlash for this has been interesting. They’re far from the first group this year to say YouTube isn’t working out and that they need to find a new platform to afford to make their content, but people have MUCH stronger feelings about this one
This is a bad move. They’re asking the same price as Dropout, but with 1/30th the content, especially in back-catalog. They already had a very profitable Patreon, and switching to a sub model is just going to lose them a lot of viewers.
