Small Channel Update - Views and Unlisting Livestreams + Playlist Link (Patreon)

Hey folks!As you may have seen, our view counts on YouTube have taken a pretty big hit over the last couple weeks.

On August 13, YouTube started experimenting with AI age verification (you can read about it here), and on August 13th the Fully Ramblomatic on Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound had a hard time cracking even 100,000 views.

That has never happened with the show.

The following week, Tales of the Shire did around what we expect at 150,000+, and then last week Mafia: The Old Country once again failed to crack 100,000 views.

Our viewership has stayed VERY consistent on Second Wind, with around 2.8 - 3+ million viewers every month, and last month it suddenly dropped around 500,000 views.

What I think is happening is YouTube is restricting our content for viewers it deems "underage" (if they're not signed in on YouTube) with this new experiment they're doing. There's really no other explanation for the sudden change in views, and it happened on the exact date that update started rolling out.

You can see how much of our content is potentially hidden by turning on Restricted Mode on YouTube. If you do have that mode on, make sure you turn it off!

I watch the data closely every week, and so when something changes, it's immediately noticeable for us a lot of the time. Views vary widely for our videos because we cover so many different topics with different personalities of varying fame, and that's normal.

What's not normal is for Fully Ramblomatic to suddenly decline in views, which is a very useful gauge to know if something is up with the channel.

We're not in any serious trouble aside from being very annoyed at YouTube, but there's nothing we can really do about that. We're still doing work for hire, still bringing in sponsors, merch, etc. When YouTube does a change like this, you kind of have to just weather the storm.

But we are going to do a few things.

First, we're going to make a big call to action to drive new people to the Patreon this week via a fun little update video. We've said since the very beginning we do not want to be reliant on YouTube, or chasing views because YouTube can and does make sudden changes like this which could seriously affect our business.

When we emailed YouTube, all they said is everything looks normal and basically gave us a "luv you bye!". This is exactly why we don't put much of any stock in the algorithm. It's just not our business model.

Secondly, we're going to take this time to change how much content we have on people's Home Feeds, which has always been a constant back and forth between us and the community.

Starting today we're going to unlist our livestreams once they have aired in hopes that reducing the amount of vods we have benefits our premium videos in some way, while the algorithm is kicking us in the teeth.

The vast majority of people that watch our livestream vods are Patreon backers, so we think just having the Livestream playlist link for you will help declutter things a bit.

Our livestream playlists remain unchanged and you'll find all the series you like watching in their appropriate playlists. Podcast vods will remain publicly listed.

Maybe it doesn't change anything at all and we later reverse this change. Time will tell, but for now we're going to try it to see if it improves anything on the channel.

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Thanks for your time and be on the lookout for some fun announcements soon including when we're filming Adventure is Nigh Season 5, the Balatro one shot release date announcement and other upcoming events we have planned!

Nick Calandra

Editor-in-Chief