BTW: Watcher is offering 30% off to everyone for their streaming service, so I guess that means the “40% off” for patrons is actually a 10% difference. 💀
So it's not even worth subbing to their patreon. Oh wow a 10% difference... Totally makes up for subbing to their streaming service while subbing to their patreon 😒🤡🤡 it doesn't clash with each other at all.... 😒
Not even Hollywood asks viewers to pay twice for *one show*. If they can’t figure out how to make that model work (and I’ve worked in the industry for decades and know decision makers-and how much they love money), then a few young dudes aren’t going to figure out how to make that model work with far less budget. C’mon…
When you cultivate an audience that embraces "Eat the Rich" you can't be shocked or mad when your audience starts to cannibalize you for making a greedy business decision.
Yes!! If they even didn’t say the words it’s 5.99 everyone can afford that. Yes I have 6$ to spare but why would I want to spend 6$ a month on a UA-cam channel that only makes 12 episodes a year of the only 2 shows I watch. And just to be fair yeah puppet history gets more videos than ghost files and mystery files but honestly mystery and ghost are the big ones that pull in the views but they have the least amount of episodes. We watched the boys when it was them in essentially a closet with a script and shitty animations on screen and that was fine
I've also heard they're denying refund requests to patrons, and have turned off comments over on Patreon. If anyone wants a refund they have to go through Patreon itself citing violation of terms of agreement iirc, since Watcher is saying, "no, we are keeping your money!!"
I also can't believe they are potentially keeping the Patreon up.... For what? People who are gonna subscribe to your streaming site are only gonna be the die hard fans or those who want and are able to support small businesses/art.... It seems insanely greedy and out of touch
I don't think it's that they didn't think it through, I think they just expected their fans to pony up without questioning it. What's another sub when you have so many already...
@peytonmcvey2289 also saw from a reddit post they turned off patreon comments. We gotta spread around to dispute directly with Patreon, not with Watcher for a refund. I've been commenting on everything I see on it to do so.
Buzzfeed unsolved literally PEAK when it's just blue and yellow subtitles talking to each other, nobody gives a shit about the "high quality production"
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.
You’re so right they need to cut the bloat if they want to survive they need to figure out what exactly makes them successful and I can tell you it’s not “tv level production”
@@4kach24 right. They offered to leave old content on UA-cam as well as publish new content on UA-cam one month later and have apologized to the patreon and offered a full refund
@@roycedot Literally, did you know literally isn't only used literally anymore? It can also be used as a way to say something in a very exaggerated way?
"six dollars a month is absolutely affordable for absolutely everybody," says the guy who drives a tesla and has multiple shows dedicated to jet hopping around the world to eat meals that cost more than some people's rent
@@roycedot it was 5.99 a month regular, they had an early adoption special that cut it down by 40 percent which might be what youre seeing not sure how you missed the 5.99 number since it was a focus of the damn video
@@anako790 everyone pinning everything on steven lim feels wildly parasocial to me tbh being the ceo doesnt mean he can just force company changes that the other founders object to. people are acting like hes got the other two in dog kennels or like hes kidnapped their families to force them to agree to this streamer bullshit or something. they all had to think this was the way to go or nothing would have happened because if they really had that big of an issue with it, they could have stopped it before we ever knew
What gets to me the most about this whole fiasco is that they have two shows that are entirely dependent on fans submitting stories for them to read for free. They put out a call for one of them just last month and have paywalled fans from seeing their own work without any prior warning.
That's such a good point, and with what they said in their most recent video, the fans who's questions were picked won't even be able to see the content till a month later unless they're trying to drop some dough
Honestly if Watcher announced they were joining Nebula and creating a couple exclusive shows there, in addition to their UA-cam content, then they'd have probably gotten very little pushback if any at all. Nebula's a bargain but it has to be to compete with all the other established streaming platforms. Watcher's fumble reminds me of how RoosterTeeth eventually fell apart because they chased aggressive growth and bloated their platform with unnecessary podcasts when most people only cared about their animation or FunHaus.
I was looking for this comment! Nebula is still cooking for a reason. The creators there usually aren't posting exclusively on Nebula either, but still creating exclusive videos and series all the time. There's hardly any pushback. Why make a whole new streaming service, pitch to one that already exists and would allow you much more creative freedom!!!
when i finally got a nebula subscription, i was happily shocked to discover how many of the creators i already loved where waiting for me there, it was amazing! and i do actually go watch some of their nebula versions even of videos they have up for free, because they're able to include stuff in those videos which youtube and advertisers would throw a fit over otherwise. every time Jacob Geller reminds me to watch his latest video on Nebula, i immediately go and do just that (and finish the youtube vid too - give him that sweet watch time) because it's genuinely worth it. i only wish i could comment, but i also know that moderating comments would be a massive headache and probably expensive to boot - i moderate for a comparatively small art community on discord and that still gets to be exhausting sometimes... but i digress. that's why the dual posting system works so well - content creators can get two revenue streams, and one version lets them make videos more true to their vision, and the other gives them access to their community to receive feedback and gauge what viewers are interested in. i don't have a horse in this race but Nebula is literally right there lmao. what were they thinking??
i think it's incredibly direspectful of them to say "everyone can afford this" while being on flights regularly enough to discuss it as a casual, biweekly activity. it's just giving out of touch with the reality of most of their fans
There was literally a time in uni when I only had $.23 in my bank account at the end of the month. Meanwhile all of my friends kept saying things like “everyone can afford this” or “doing this isn’t that expensive”. Yes, for some people it absolutely is, and until they personally go through it some people will never get it.
@Wtfamidoing2970 you just described my high school years and the first 2 years of grad school for me. Once a kid stiffed me the $5 an hour that I asked for as a tutor. I saw him emerging from McDonald's later, because it was around the corner from my house. I thought "McDonald's is where I eat when I *do* have money" 😔
@@LindaC616 oh my goodness this. One of my “friends” at the time got upset I wanted money back I had leant to her months prior and gave me such an attitude about it. Like ma’am, you post daily about going to Starbucks, meanwhile I’m literally eating pb&j and need that money to buy more bread, but go off 😂 I remember when I finally got back on my feet and was able to afford my first pizza and nearly cried 😂 It’s bad, and with the inflation now I can’t even begin to imagine how bad it would be if I was back at that point in life again. Like it’s unreal how much money I’m dropping for everyday necessities anymore, so I stopped any type of “frivolous” purchases as I’m legitimately afraid of being back there again.
They bragged about how they would be able to put this TV show level of quality for all of their shows when, ironically enough, that was the exact reason I was beginning to lose interest in watching their channel before their "announcement". With their newest seasons of Ghost Files and Mystery Files - yeah, they have a bigger set and all of these new fancy gizmos - but everything else felt phoned in. One of my favorite series they did was Too Many Spirits, which was literally just them getting drunk in their backyard and telling ghost stories. That dynamic that I initially came for and loved from Buzzfeed Unsolved and shows like that slowly disappeared when they started to double down on being more like TV. Just, man. They built their entire brand on interacting with their audience (taking suggestions from their viewers, live shows, Q&As, reblogging fan memes on their tumblr), and it sucks that what they really wanted from us was more money. Parasocial relationships are weird.
Yeah I stopped watching just before they switched to watcher because what the two of them had just wasn’t really there as much anymore and it didn’t feel like the thing actually liked
one thing that scratched me the wrong way is that their new productions have a higher cost - say they hired an animator and costume designer for a show that is basically shane talking to ryan just like on buzzfeed - but theres no real quality improvement on the type of content itself, it just boils down to them talking, no matter how much money they invest in sets and illustrations. hell they have specific directors and editors hired to deal with brand sponsorships. and the audience that already pays them a lot for content (patreon, lives, etc) has to pay for more bc of your frivolous desires? of what only they consider a improvement of content?
Rhett and Link saying they're done pitching shows to be on TV and putting more time into their own channel content (for 0.00/month) is how creators who respect/appreciate their fanbase act. Not whatever the f this greed is.
To be fair, it's easy to say that when your pitches fail or they're successful...with the caveat that you change everything that made it yours. Please believe, if it worked out the way they wanted, they would've been out too.
Tbf it's pretty easy for Rhett and Link to have humility when GMM is.. a very.. mellow low key show with.. nothing much happening. They're probably pretty thankful that they've garnered.. ANY success.
@@ohko3892 couldn't disagree more. They're UA-cam legends (Rhett and the beautiful Mr. link neal), these fools are just greedy goblins reproducing content that has been done 500x before on 20 different platforms.
"There's this idea that better production equals a better experience." Meanwhile i'm here watching an unshaven scraggle bearded man who looks like he just woke up in a black void and i'm not watching Watcher.
You can't throw enough money behind something and turn it into Prestige TV, the same way you can't get nine women pregnant and hope for a baby in a month.
Their content is super mid. It's mostly them making jokes to each other and trying to act like it wasn't in the script while telling ghost stories. It's not content I would want to watch in the first place, much less pay money specifically for it. They're so full of themselves
The first 'Watcher TV exclusive' leaked btw; its 8 minutes of Ryan rambling pretty deadpan about what its like to film an episode of Ghost Files, including how they fake their 'first impressions' of the place, and how the entire cast & crew went to the cinema to watch Dune 2. He also calls one fast food chain "ok, but not better than [other fast food chain]". He opens the video with "this might be a series, might be a one off, who knows" so...yeah. Really promising TV quality productions over there. Definitely worth the $1.50 it costs ($6/month with 1 video/week)
last month on Patreon they had 5,730 subscribers, they would've made $28,650 in a single month if every member paid $5, however it should be noted most people paid between $10 & $25 dollars so the amount is closer to $57,300+. (for a single year using their worst performing month, they would make between $343,800 and $687,600 on patreon alone) looking at the Watcher's main channel alone they have an rpm between 6 & 8.5. in this year alone they have published 22 videos grossing more than 18,324,000 views. Since January, they would have made between $109,944 and $155,754. if we take into account Charlie's(Penguinz0) statements about ad rates we can assume that every ad read gave them $10,000 to $25,000. In 22 videos since the start of January they have had 10 ads, since most of the videos are bloopers from other ones instead of actual content. This would place ad revenue between $100,000 and $250,000. If we continue this trend, 10ads/4months, they would have 30 ads ranging from $300,000 to $750,000 a year. in total, they would have made anywhere between $324,544 and $634,954 since January and will make roughly $973,632 to $1,904,862. again these are all with conservative numbers. they had absolutely no need. what they needed to do was film more videos, because in no world are these videos "worth" $6, the general script is mid, and they mostly just have fun. I know its part of their brand but the video ideas are so basic they could film multiple videos in a week, (if it takes 4 hours to film and they work a 9/5) they would be able to film 10 videos a week, or 8 if they want to dedicate one day to ad reads and podcasting. they have 15+ staff mentioned in the videos, which is again absolutely ridiculous to have production coordinators, and heads of development, production, post production, etc. when the work these videos take is not a lot. they literally stand in front of a pulldown board and lecture you about really common anomalies that everyone has heard before. so many other youtubers make this content in a 1-2 person team bc its really not that difficult, especially when all of the information is on wikipedia
Steven Lim really messed up with his Instagram post that he took hours to edit. It threw Napalm on a dumpster fire by saying "For those fans who got us here, we really appreciate your viewership. For those who WANT to continue watching us...." which can be roughly interpreted as "For those fans who got us here (and are no longer needed).... For those who WANT to continue watching (which are the real fans and are the super bestest)." People were mad before, but once he posted that cringe everything went into top effing gear.
@@milhousevanhoutan9235 Unfortunately you are not the first person to point out Steven Lim’s… IDK. Obsession with number and fame? I personally think it’s really gross. But hey he finally showed his true character.
@@ZBBBlL girl wtf are you on. literally stfu. this isn't performative activism. you clearly don't know what that word means lmao did you just learn about it on tiktok last month or something
They’re trying to do what collegehumor successfully did with dropout, except dropout has always continued to post a significant amount of their content up on youtube and has clearly put the money from subscriptions to use, while watcher has not made any indication of evolving its programing to make subscriptions worth it
Fr that bothered me as well - they wanted to LEAVE youtube for good! That’s not good marketing like CollegeHumor had with their snippets of their shows. We’re just expected to follow them into the streaming service and HOPE it’s good.
@@Lamsus854 your opinion is valid, but I personally enjoy the content. There’s always a new show to discover (as someone who mainly joined for Game Changer) and they regularly update them.
I was just thinking about dropout. At least with dropout it’s a service with so many different “shows”. And they also know their fans and know fans wait until after a show is done airing, spend five bucks, and binge the series. That or rich dnd nerds having a full subscription watching dimension 20 on there
Although we international viewers from developing countries may not be the biggest percentage of subscribers, it still hurt to be overlooked like this, because even when six dollars isn´t that much for them, that amount of money at least cuadruples in my country, so for people here is the equivalent of paying almost 30 dollars for what it is basically a paywalled youtube channel.
absolutely, and that amount is a huge part of our "disposable income" which isn't disposable at all, most people in developing countries don't have disposable income, but sacrifice lower needs to spend on something they enjoy. A pair of shoes i'm in love with means i should not spend on taxis for the next 3 months.
@@alexd1730they have 12738 members… even if everyone was at 5 dollars, that’s 63k a year… for a lot of people, that’s a full time job… and we know that many pay more then the 5 dollars
I was asking myself about the Patreon, because one would assume that if you paywall your stuff, you would also suspend your Patreon. And I was on the fence about calling this move "greed", because I thought that if they were getting rid of Patreon too, then there must be something more behind it.....but they're keeping their 60k per month AT MINIMUM Patreon AND offering a shitty discount to them instead of including the subscription in their base tier AND they also want the subscription money. If that's not PURE greed I don't know what it is, they completely compromised their image and the persona they were playing at this point(whom everyone thought was their genuine personality), bye bitch lol
@@britt678sadly u do tho, Crickets (embroidery/sticker/general arts and crafts gizmo) is 10 bucks a month for the software. To play PlayStation games on your ps5 u need PlayStation plus AND internet. You HAVE to have car insurance, you HAVE to pay your rent, you HAVE to pay your water etc. there’s a NUMBER “subscriptions” you have to pay.
@britt678 of course, that's why nobody is going to subscribe to Watcher. Other services provide more stuff for the money; spending ANOTHER 6 a month for puppet history, ghost files, and mystery files just isn't a value proposition I or apparently anyone else who likes Ryan and Shane find appealing.
Steven definitely has that Silicon Valley brain rot. During that whole “soft launch” speech I was constantly expecting the next words out of his mouth to be “liquidity pool”
Almost everything about Steven rubs me the wrong way. He doesn’t have the same “genuineness” that Shane and Ryan do. He seems very aloof and self absorbed
Some people don't understand that the difference between FREE and $0.01 is monumental. The effort that it takes me to pull out my wallet and enter a 16 digit number to subscribe to your service is too much of a hassle just by itself.
I think sideplus is the best example of paying extra for bts, extra videos and seeing things UA-cam wouldn't allow aswell i think a exclusive podcast they do
The fact each episode of ghost files costs them HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS Of dollars is wild with 10+ people being jetted to each location. They have bloated so much and production gone through the roof. It’s 2 dudes ghost hunting, it should not take the cost of a nice house!
Bloat is often the reason for lower quality or greedy monetisation. I mean, look at fucking video games, which cost like 500 mil to make and then not even looking better than some 5 dude indie game.
What about people in less prosperous countries where $6 could be groceries for a week? Not everyone lives in a wealthy nation and have disposable income 😢
Good insight. And you’re absolutely right. Yes, obviously “most” people do have the ability to spend $6 on something entertainment-related. But, are they willing to spend it on something they used to get for free, doesn’t offer anything “better” than what people could get elsewhere for free, and is not a good value in and of itself when compared to competitive services
@@Day-ZDuke I liked their content when it was free and just had to eat some ads from UA-cam, but for six dollars... No, a dollars or two extra and its the price of every other streaming Services that has lote more content.
Even if he didn't, he's not the CEO and doesn't have that kind of power. The only one that holds CEO status is Steven and beyond that it's 2 to 1. If Ryan and Steven are on board and Shane didn't want it? Too bad, so sad.
@@mybrainis3freezedriedpeas897 What's weird to me is that I didn't realize that Steven is the sole CEO now, they used to all share that position, but it changed in January 2024
Shane just had a 250k wedding and you’re surprised he agreed to this? All three of them are culpable and agreed to make this decision together, not just Steven Lim
I just feel bad for the fans that submitted stories for Too Many Spirits and evidence for Ghost Files. They didn’t feel the need to pay these people. They used their fans to do their work and now told those same fans “it’s not us, it’s you”. It’s not good enough to give us content, views, likes, subscribing, commenting, buying merch, doing patreon, and live shows. You have to give us more that we can change at any time. I don’t think it’ll be long before they raise prices, then add ads, and take in sponsors again.
Another massive issue is that Steven Lim (the third guy) wants to start making another run of Worth It, where he eats $1,000 sushi in a penthouse with his fancy friends
@@ocoolwow Lol, leave it to the bootlickers to see anger where only logic is being spoken. No matter what you say, they've ruined their reputations and businesses and the adults can discuss how they did. You can go sit in a corner and suck your thumb, kiddo.
Nah he's just the fall guy. Worth it was pretty much the cash cow of buzzfeed. I think this is them trying to add more catalogue to their paywalling. They have been planning this sh*t since that time they started deleting their back catalogue. I have no idea why they needed 30 employees in one of the costliest cities on earth. It makes no sense.
there was a comment i saw that basically said “we were happy even back at buzzfeed when it was just the yellow and blue subtitles. All we wanted was you”, which sums up my feelings pretty well if they want to make high production stuff, sure thats totally up to them. but thats not what their audience wants, thats not what i wanted. i hope they find a new audience that likes their new stuff, but its just no longer what i want to watch
ngl hearing that comment made me a bit emotional. I love these guys since i first saw them on Buzzfeed unsolved years ago. They were my source of comfort and there was just something so fun about seeing two guys goofing off about mysterious things, whether it be talking about UFOs or traumatizing the ghost from the Sallie house. It was a simple premise, yet one that brought so much joy to people's lives. Life got busy and i stopped watching their content, and i was thinking of getting around to watching the last few episodes of ghost files and learned about this. I don't know what to feel now. It doesn't even feel real, to see them on the end of drama of all things. Personally, i don't think Ryan & shane were heavily involved in this decision just based on what I've seen from them, it moreso looks like their CEO wanted funds to keep his irrelevant food show running, but idk. I think that's just my nostalgia speaking. I hope the guys learn from this and keep doing what they've always done, because i'd really hate to see them gone like this. I understand their desire to go high production, but they need to understand that it's not what most of us wanted. We just wanted episodes of two guys being chaotic and twerking at ghosts, not...whatever this is. They might come back, try to roll it back and will likely get backlash for it, but so long as they're genuine in their mistake, i'd forgive them. But if they don't then..i don't know. I just wish that things didn't have to end like this.
I watched that entire “Goodbye UA-cam” waiting for it to end with one of them go “Ha! April Fools! It’s late but whatever.” And it never happened and I was just so confused and then I got PISSED. Even if they go “Okay sorry we won’t do the streaming service and stay on UA-cam.” I dunno if I could keep watching them cause it’s just left a sour taste. Like when the Fine bros tried to copyright the word “react”. I haven’t watched any of their videos since.
Ooh, I was subscribed to them when that video first dropped and then proceeded to go viral. I actually didn’t watch the original video, I was following a commentary channel at the time who did cover it and I felt bad, then angry, then burst out laughing. I couldn’t believe they acted like they were the first ones to do reaction content. One of the more successful ones, sure, that was because they had many people on their segments and people didn’t subscribe or even watch their content for them. They were behind the camera, people tuned in to witness how kids react, how teens react, how UA-camrs react, and finally how seniors react. I don’t know how old their channel was at the time they dropped that video, I just googled it. 2007 was the year they started their channel but they didn’t start react videos until in 2010. Which… just as I had originally thought, reacting to certain things has been around for quite a while before that but on television. In fact, I used to watch a television series called The Smoking Gun Presents: World’s Dumbest/Strangest/etc. series that starred celebrities who usually had arrest records. Many of whom did not have an active career in Hollywood. Some of these “celebrities” would have also been called “wash-ups” when the show initially aired in 2008. These “celebrities” included Tanya Harding, a figure skate an Olympic skater who had been arrested, tried, and convicted of conspiracy to cause bodily harm to another Olympic figure skater, Nancy Karrigan. There was even a movie made about Tanya’s life including said incident and her subsequent arrest called I, Tanya. Todd Bridges who had been a child actor in Diff’rent Strokes. Todd had become a drug addict and had been arrested for robbery. When he was released he starred in a few things here and there including appearing in a Dave Chappelle skit on his show Chappelle’s show. A few years after that he had starred in a celebrity reality show whose name escapes me. When he finally got something that he hoped would make a resurgence of his former acting career, his former co-star and fellow child actor Gary Coleman as he wanted to revitalize his own career. I will say that unlike Todd Bridges, Gary Coleman had more of a career. Sure, he didn’t have big roles but Todd Bridges really had nothing. Todd had warned Gary that if he did this for him, he had to behave and understand that Diff’rent Strokes was a popular pop culture phenomenon when they were children and Gary Coleman had one of the biggest catch phrases of all time, “Watch ya talking ‘bout…” and that other celebrities who grew up on the show will ask him to say the quote. Gary said he had understood, however, when the cast mates did start saying the quote, Gary Coleman flipped out on them. It was so bad that Todd tried to step in but quickly the two got into a huge fight and Gary was kicked off the show. Not long after that Gary had passed away. The point I am making is this, The Fine Bros. did not start the react content as The Smoking Gun beat them by 2 years and at the time were the biggest reaction channels on UA-cam but certainly was not the first. So when they dropped that video claiming that they would start that React company it was laughable. Which is why the backlash cost them their channels (they had multiple too) because despite being the biggest, they were not the first to do react videos on television and certainly not UA-cam. They most definitely should have realized that much before they dropped that video. So if it hadn’t worked for the Fine Bros with their millions of subscribers and videos with millions of views I don’t get why Watcher thought they would be able to get away with this.
I've seen less charismatic people recover from worse (and way more reprehensible) blunders, so I highly doubt it will kill the channel _entirely,_ but they're definitely not getting the outcome they wanted and will need to publicly eat some humble pie if they ever want to get even close to being back to where they were. And this is entirely self-inflicted, which just makes it all even funnier.
What threw me off wasn’t the paywalling - it was Watcher as a whole. The last season of Buzzfeed Unsolved was these two at their peak, mastered their craft. I was so excited to see them continue that on Watcher….but got the most random other content instead. The true crime and investigations didn’t hit the same and came way less frequently than the random taste tests and puppet shows. If they created a higher quality version of Unsolved and really nailed it, I would follow them to a streaming service. But they couldn’t even hold me through Watcher.
From memory the constant study and looking into murder cases was harmful for Ryan's mental health. Branching into different content isn't bad but there was no way this would work with the audience style they have
@@juicyeboi9006 Okay that is good context that I wasn’t aware of - thanks for adding. In that case I agree, there are other ways to crowdfund money for higher quality. Or perhaps outsource the Ryan and Shane dynamic to another couple that could take on that research? Strengthen the niche of their content or move to their own domain and run Google ads, post whatever content they want from there. Hindsight is 20/20 I guess.
The main reason they didn't continue Unsolved on Watcher was that it's Buzzfeed property. Take Try Guys, they had to buy that brand from Buzzfeed. I don't know what arrangement Watcher had with Buzzfeed, but I'm assuming it's something like can't make that content with some rules.
@@N0noy1989Buzzfeed doesnt own true crime tho, they just couldve done the same under a new name, and honestly it wasnt. Ghost Files was pretty much the only good show on it and maybe Puppet history. Doesnt matter anymore tho
@@Mr-pn2ehNo, I mean they were going to remove their back catalog from UA-cam at first, and very transparently back-tracked and said "Whaaaat?? We never said that u sillies!" When the backlash hit.
yeah, that would of been just a shot to the foot of they went though with that plan. Having the back catalog on YT and shorts is how many indies are getting people to sign up for their services
Ryan and Shane depend on him a weird amount. No one even came to the channel for him, but Shane and Ryan depended on him for pitching for producers when they first started the channel.
As an OG Unsolved fan, this felt like a major betrayal. I know they don't owe anyone anything, but there is a weird consumer phenomenon where people tend to react negatively when people suddenly charge money for something that has been provided for free for literal YEARS. I hope they walk it back, but I'm not at all hopeful. This was an idiotic idea packaged and delivered in a shit stained middlefinger-shaped box imo.
og unsolved fan, and watching the entire video, I never expected everyone to hate so bad. I literally thought it was a great idea. I wasn't planning on paying but figured they are catering to their core fans. idk
Interestingly, Ryan is the only one deleting Instagram comments. Shane probably isn't on there much to notice and would likely leave it up and take the L. Steven is getting ROASTED harder than whiskey-marinaded, gold-leaf-covered Japanese Kobe Steak.
So much of this just feels like them showing their true colors. I used to respect ryan (and shane, not steven tho guys always been a self centered rich dirtbag) but to hear he's deleting negative comments? yeah, that tracks.
To be perfectly honest, as someone who’s followed Shane and Ryan from Buzzfeed to Watcher , I don’t know how their reputation can come back from this. Even if they carefully craft the best apology video in existence, they’ve effectively ousted themselves as rich dudes super out of touch with their fanbase and too irresponsible to run a business of this size. Edit:just watched the update video. Even that doesn’t clear anything up about how they’ll be going forward and it feels like a forced script reading. Fml 🤦♂️ I really liked these guys.
The irony that I’m shocked no one has mentioned yet is that THEY’RE ALREADY ON HBO MAX. They’re on UA-cam, they get ad rev, they have Patreon, and they’re in HBO Max. Good lord how much are they spending?
i couldnt find it with a cursory search, only thing i could find was The Watcher tv show? i dont think they have an HBO show, but yes, they have YT, ad rev, and Patreon, along w expensive merch ($50-$80) for a sweatshirt, which already gross a high amnt
As someone who's been loosely following them for many years, I still prefer the low budget "two guys with a gopro yelling at imaginary ghosts in an old house" type content that made them famous, and I don't care very much about the other stuff, regardless of how high the quality may be. Hoping they go back to that and maybe work on a netflix pitch if they want a tv show, or something.
@@itachidattebayoyeah. i used to love unsolved but i preferred low budget content, which is why i basically only watched puppet history and… nothing else.
@@itachidattebayo steven lim was fine at first and then with their whole horror stories sitting in the yard was fine, that series was fun UNTIL Steven started acting really just unneccesarily pissed off towards the bartender they brought in. It was HELLA uncomfortable. After that i tried to avoid anything with Steven in it cause I don't want that feeling of unfriendly conflict.
@@JerryAndSteve wait which episode of too many spirits was this? I've watched some of their content like 1-2 years ago and stopped cause of uni. Was Steven actually acting weird with the bartender?
I think they want to make higher production quality content, like it'll scratch a creative itch for them or something. But none of us asked for that. We actually asked for less lol. So if they want to make Netflix-style content, then they should find the money to fund it themselves through sponsors, ads, gofundme, whatever. They could produce a high quality TV series that will only be available to the higher tier Patrons to maybe try to entice fans to subscribe to a higher tier. Or like I've said, do a kickstarter or gofundme or find a good sponsor that will fund the project or a company to collab with. SO MANY OPTIONS that do not involve asking their poor college age viewers to pay for their expensive dinners and fancy equipment.
The fact that the Patrons wouldn't be given a sub to this new service is such a kick in the teeth. It somehow keeps getting more insulting the more I hear about the whole thing
I've been a Watcher Patron since day one, and have been monitoring the situation on their Patreon posts and in their Discord. I would disagree with the statement that Patrons hate the change even more than non-Patrons; most of the people defending Watcher or even supporting the change are follow long-term Patrons, especially those at higher membership tiers. Most of the Patron backlash I've seen comes from 1) $5 members, for whom the streamer is a sizeable price hike, and 2) people who paid for an annual membership, and are now watching half the stuff they paid for get canceled and replaced with a podcast they didn't ask for. The Discord's been a hot mess. There's been back-and-forths between people angry about the streamer and people defending the streamer. The moderators (who have been doing this for years, unpaid) have been running ragged trying to keep the backlash under control. I firmly believe that the main reason why these people are defending Watcher is the sunk-cost fallacy. They've spent years watching every piece of Patreon-exclusive content, they've been doing unpaid fan labor for these guys, and they've given Watcher hundreds if not thousands of dollars. They don't want to hear the critics out, because if the critics are right, it means that all that time, work, and money essentially went to waste.
That's not even considering their not insignificant international audience. The price is $6 USD one price worldwide.... To put that in perspective, per MONTH that's 500 indian rupees. Netflix's lowest tier costs.... 199 rupees/month so Watcher is essentially saying they're worth 2.5 times what Indian netflix is worth. A Brazilian fan pointed out the annual fee with discount was over 300 Reais, which was 2+ months of groceries. Like basically they said "If you're not in the US, Canada, EU, UK, Australia, or New Zealand, miss us with that poor shit." Which has been one of the most educational things for me, is international viewers posting how much $6 is in their currency and more importantly HOW MUCH PURCHASING POWER that amount has in their country. I originally made a mistake in this comment, thanks to @gomboc5146 for pointing it out. I couldn't remember the poster's cost in indian rupees so I used a conversion site and accidentally convert to Indonesian Rupees (IRP) vs Indian Rupees (INR). The above comment has been corrected.
I kinda could, but I'm already a patreon to several youtubers, and my money only goes so far. And I'd rather pay so that others still have free access, just like I have to other channels I don't financially support, than this exclusive streaming BS. Patreon, YT subscription, Nebula, etc., of all the options available they went for the absolutely stupidest.
I think it's extra baffling and hurtful to realize that like...after all these years with such a dedicated viewership, they actually have no idea what their viewers are like
The whole video gave me “There are starving children in Africa who can’t ACCESS streaming services, so we’re doing this for YOU and you should be GRATEFUL.” It’s fine that they want money. Fine, whatever. But shooting your current fandom, who have stuck with you for years and years, directly in the face is a bad move. As if most of us aren’t young folx living through one of the worst cost of living crisis in history, where $6 a month really could make a difference.
I think the sidemen did it best when they launched their paid service. All the content that was on UA-cam stayed on UA-cam and the production value went up because of the paid service. The paid service only had additional content like podcasts, behind the scenes and a few exclusive series that were not on UA-cam before. When you create a paid service for people consuming your free content, it needs to be them paying for additional content, not the same thing they already get for free.
@@oddozone I was subbed for a few months when it first came out, was worth it. Only reason I stopped paying was because I needed to weigh up all the options for monthly payments and cancel some. What I’ve seen from it since then is that it’s gotten even better.
The sad thing for me is that there seems to be some crossover in terms of creators on these streaming services. Ify has been on Watcher for a while now but he's also a big part of the Dropout crew, I think he's even hosting some of the game shows on their network. I feel like they should have just tried joining with one of the other creator streaming services, whether Dropout or Nebula. Maybe they were just hoping for a bigger part of the pie...
@@michaelberry8096 If they did combine watcher to dropout without changing the price It may finally push me to pay for it (Already paid for nebula and hesitant to paying more streaming services unless it's actually worth it)
@@michaelberry8096 Big Agree should have just joined Dropout if they wanted to be like them so badly. Their WatcherTV site even has a similar name and same design layout/interface to Dropout
@@michaelberry8096 really? I didnt know that; I'd actually never heard of Watcher before this fiasco. and at this point I doubt I'll ever be a fan, lol
i just hope y'all understand that "the rich" are billionaires like yea, they want money, but i doubt they're looking to make billions maybe just somewhere above average
@@he4rt5Nah, “The rich” are always just richer than the person doing the eating, it’s not just billionaires, its anyone who owns a business, farm, etc. its basically a pansy pussy way of saying revolution.
I think they also underestimated the fact that people are also sick of the excess of streaming service options out there. Every studio has one and honestly most people want many of them to die or merge so we can go back to just paying for one streaming service.
Most people only really watched them for Shane and Ryan’s series, they could make cuts on certain series that aren’t doing as well as those series. And their audience doesn’t necessarily care about the super high quality content, it already has been so good, it’s the lower budget which makes it enjoyable, not heavily scripted or produced. That’s the fun of it all
Not gonna lie, they could cut _everything_ except for Puppet History and Ghost Files, and I'd be fine. I don't watch anything else of theirs and just don't care lol.
@@ittybittyrampagingcommitteeI like are you scared as well as those two shows , but that’s it! And that’s just them reading scary stories on a zoom call , so they don’t need all this production
I laughed when you said it sounded like a Silicone Valley Bro and not a YT creator. That was Steven Lim talking, the one everyone is blaming for this. He's the CEO, and yes, he laterally has "co-founder" on his Instagram lol
He became CEO because Ryan and Shane were like “shit this is hard” and Steven took over as sole CEO. And Steven is very much the “soft launch” using, “founder” listing, Silicon Valley type, but without the coding and tech knowledge.
@@RebeccaBredin Just when shane was like "okay Steven, talk about money" that's enough for me to see that the ghoul boys don't know shit about running a company or a big youtube channel and decided to just trust all those things to steven who's obviously Mishandling the funds. Cause it's weird that one of the main blame is being pointed out on the cost of doing ghost files when that is their most successful series that gets BIG sponsorships like we're talking about movie studios and a freaking a TOWN, so ofcourse it's okay to invest in ghost files, but again Steven has also been doing heaps of content that isn't doing as well as ryan and Shane's , and had to take money on videos from ryan and Shane to fund his shows. Fans were quick to notice that they plan on doing a show for Steven where he travels AROUND THE WORLD, to try fancy foods, when again his content isn't doing as well as ryan and Shane, he had the opportunity to have a travel show when no one was asking for it and on the contrary people are asking for ghost files to be set on other countries which is a much better investment but nahh
i don’t think they realize that people literally don’t care about production value. buzzfeed unsolved was so popular BECAUSE it was shane and ryan just talking about true crime-because of their personalities. they averaged 10m views on each video, it’s obviously people didn’t care about production quality at ALL. this is such a horrible move, the dislike to like ratio on that video is insane. it has nearly 210k dislikes
it's such a dumb idea too - so much of their audience are broke students, like me, or like.... teenagers. they aren't going to make money from this, not as much as they were with youtube. especially given so many of their viewers are not exactly in favour of corporations like this- watcher was endearing at the start because it was three guys striking out from buzzfeed due to working conditions they were upset by. they presented it as "we are going to be a better company for our audience and our staff." i feel like, like me, a lot of people who liked watcher came from buzzfeed unsolved and admired their whole "from the ground up" thing. watcher is becoming a whole lot less personal and it very much seems like they've lost sight of their audience. it's kind of a shame really, i just hope the staff don't suffer.
It’s weird how I don’t hear ppl talk about (imo) the biggest issue with all this - if a bunch of UA-camrs start charging $5 a month then everyone else will do it too. And before we know it, it’ll cost 100 bucks+ a month to just watch 25 UA-cam channels
That's not gonna happen. The reason why tv/cable has gone down is because of the free amazing content. If everyone starts doing this, then new, amazing creators will start their free channel which people will flock to. Simple supply and demand.
RoosterTeeth was a youtube channel that did this back in the day and it killed a lot of their fanbase. This kind of decision isn't new. But people don't do it because it's dumb as hell.
this was the issue years ago when it was still (possibly) a not totally insane choice to try and pivot this way. it's crazy that they are trying it NOW, on top of everything else.
We have too many streaming services already. Adding in a "one-trick-pony" service just isn't interesting. Also, people overestimate the support they have when the content is free (with ads of course). Why are news services struggling with getting people to pay for the news when it has been free for so long? It's the same issue. Netflix was never free. Hulu has managed to survive somehow, going from free with ads to a low price with ads, but they offer a lot of content. Anyway, killing your brand isn't worth it for the sake of the bottom line.
For me, Hulu is a good deal because of the movies on there. Some absolutely bangers and great movies come and go. It's how I watched the newest starship trooper movies. I've watched all the alien movies. Hulu with ads is a good deal, without a doubt. But I will add in, I also get Spotify with my membership, and I believe that's no longer a thing, so I'm grandfathered in. I believe now it's just for students.
How do they think they are going to attract new subscribers to their niche service, if the only people who know they exist are the people who used to watch their now abandoned UA-cam channel? The only way UA-camrs can make paywalls work is by using their channel to advertise it, which means a lot of their content continues to go on UA-cam. That's why the UA-cam + Patreon + Nebula split is becoming popular.
So many of these suits only care about short term results because it looks better. It's harder to prove things in the long term where a result of you. Which is convenient when their quick answers end up hurting it more down the line and they can pretend it's not their fault.
What's more frustrating is that a small percentage of their brain rot fans are going to buy this, and it's going to be enough for them to keep doing it.
Other UA-camrs have created premium paywalled content before -- Nebula is the benchmark for this. If they wanted to expand into other projects, why not sign onto Nebula? (If they asked Nebula and Nebula didn't take them, then their new subscription service isn't worth the $6 /month. Nebula's turned down contracts with less-than-reputable creators before.)
I enjoyed their content but no way in hell i’m paying $6 a month for it. I only watched them casually once in a while and if I paid $6 a month for every channel I watched i’d be broke. Now if they joined something like Nebula where there’s a decent amount of content then i’d consider it
When I watched their video this morning, I honestly thought it was building up to them announcing that they were moving to Nebula. It would've made a lot more sense.
Yeah, I'm a subscriber of theirs and didn't even know they had a Patreon, they should have promoted that more before deciding this was the best way to go.
@@spiderwrist Even raising the price of their Patreon and nothing more would've probably been fine. Sure they would've gotten some complaints, but most people understand that Patreon is extra so most patrons probably wouldn't have minded much because they could always reduce their patronage or unsubscribe.
They have 12 599 patrons atm. Some of them are screwed for having already fully paid the annual plan, especially those who gave away $1200. They for sure didn't predict they will still be charged for a subscription.
We were (well, ARE, still, will be until the end of the year) Patrons. Used to get early access to shows, which was nice, but frankly we just supported them because we wanted to support creators we enjoyed where we could afford to. We were probably their ideal audience. After watching that video, I’m annoyed that they’re getting the remainder of our yearly Patreon membership. That was the biggest Eff You I’ve ever watched.
They did an update video. They're not taking down the website, but they're changing how it works. Videos one month early on the website then free on UA-cam, and apologized for saying "anyone can afford it"
The problem, fundamentally, is that when Watcher was being run on UA-cam, the viewers didn't have to pay any money to watch it. UA-cam was paying Watcher, not the viewers. Sure, we had to sit through a few ads, but we didn't lose money every time we watched an ad, so it wasn't our money that was paying them. Now it's being run on viewers' money. Now we will actually have to pay them money to watch it, and for only two series I watch on their channel, it's just not worth it.
I think the problem is that everybody immediately thinks "What if all the UA-cam channels I like charge me?" Do I pay them all? Pay $60 a month for just my favourite ten channels?
This is why pirating is coming back so heavily. For a good few years the convo about it was slim and now with streaming services getting greedier it’s becoming big again. I started using ad blockers on UA-cam because of how bad it finally has gotten. They’ll be fine without my ad view. It’s getting bad everywhere
They’re blathering about high production being necessary and shedding followers, meanwhile Voidzilla is here with just a mic, headphones, one key light, and a black background already growing to a fourth their channel size and trending up. I don’t think these guys really get it.
Imagine working for ten years and finding out that all youre hard work dosent pay well and having to change platforms just to get paid well youtube is dying
@NZ_NATIV3 Don't. They're not starving artists struggling to make ends meet. Not one but a FEW of Watcher's shows are about the CEO flying around/driving in his Tesla to try exorbitant dishes to tell you if they're "worth it." (i.e. Wagyu steak, lobster, gold flake stuff, etc.) They have several sources of income and it's become incredibly apparent that they've mismanaged funds, hired excessive staff, and sorely misread their audience. It is in INCREDIBLY poor taste to ask your audience to foot the bill after all things considered, especially for 60-72$ a year. So don't start with the "they're just trying to make their money" crap.
@@NZ_NATIV3 They were making over $60k a month just from their patreon 😂not including ad revenue from youtube which Moist pointed out would be quite high given their mil view videos. No one has asked them for higher quality content. no one asked them for any of the stuff they were complaining about in their video.
You know, that's why UA-cam Premium exists. You pay a monthly subscription (1 USD in my case) and your favourite creators get a cut according to your watch time.
It was Steven. Teaming up with Steven was one of the worst business decisions they’ve ever made. The guy is greedy, has the personality of a dead fish, gets way less views than any of the Shane and Ryan centric videos, and single-handedly destroyed Shane and Ryan’s careers. They need to FIRE Steven, downsize their staff and production quality, and go back to their roots.
Dang, I didn’t realize that this was happening. They should’ve just gone with a UA-cam Membership. It would’ve gone a lot better because people don’t need to swap platforms and it gives people a choice to just have a subscription+ if they choose to.
This has to be one of the most disappointing things they've ever done. I thought moving away from Buzzfeed would've been a good thing... boy was I wrong.
Moving away from Buzzfeed was the right thing to do and it paid off big time for these guys. The problem is that they got greedy and bloated, and instead of slowly building up this successful business with what works they've listened to the most idiotic person in the room and decided to gamble it all. I don't like calling anyone out, we don't know all the details or whose idea this was, but I really do think their CEO is the one to blame for this disaster. He's the one making all the most out-of-touch statements, he's the one who sounds like a Silicon Valley tech bro, he's the one driving a Tesla, he's the one posing in photos on Insta wearing shades in the club and accepting an "influencer award" at an event no one's heard of while wearing an expensive suit, and he's the one who wants to bring back a food show where they travel the world eating obscenely overpriced garbage. He's so impressively out-of-touch with reality I can only believe that he is the one who has driven this company off a cliff while chasing his own entitlement.
@@ct5625cope more they all thought it was a good idea…if it was really all him there would be pushback on their side which this never would’ve happened, a split, or a breach of contract if one was signed. Like when they left Buzzfeed. Their CEO is just the guy that convinced them their audience would go for it so they can do what they actually want to do, and thus they tried the pitch/sale.
@@ct5625even if it the CEO idea they still went along with it. They are grown adults and not one of them thought this was gonna backfire? I’ve never seen this formula work ever heck rooster teeth tried that and look what happened to them. It doesn’t help that Ryan has been deleting comments peoples critiquing this horrible stupid idea
Imo an example of a youtube channel that did this same thing but really well is Collegehumor's shift to Dropout. But unlike this, there wasn't a Patreon and they promised a lot of new content that wouldnt have worked on UA-cam that they delivered on, and they delivered on that content
Post-Buzzfeed, I really wanted to support Watcher because I thought they could make some really good things. But, honestly, I haven't watched their content in months because despite the improved production quality, most of the shows didn't feel better than even early Unsolved. Their ghost hunting show didn't have the soul that unsolved had. Their true crime/mystery content was not very interesting. Puppet history was the only series I really enjoyed, but that is in no way enough to justify paying for this. I want them to succeed in general, but this change just doesn't seem justified at this time.
Its smaller cut without patreon. That being said gmm has a streamer in the same price range. Its just the extra content that they put on it while their hits stay on the main
Ya, this came so out of the blue it makes your head spin. This is way too massive a business decision to make without any testing of the water or compromise. Other channels I've seen that do similar things still post on UA-cam, the streaming service is just a few months ahead and might have additional "shows", but nothing is lost. Been watching these guys for years, and how the hell did they get so out of touch?
The funny thing about "production value" and UA-cam is that at least a significant chunk of us aren't actually *watching* a lot of the more long form essay/talk based content. We're listening to it while working, driving, doing housework. So like, a good mic matters. But not so much the fancy graphics. It does look like some of these guys stuff is more classic "tv watching" type shows. But in that case (if UA-cam isn't working out for them) if there's an actual market for them as "tv shows" they'd be better off trying to get onboard with one of the actual streaming services. And if there *isn't* an actual market for them as "tv shows" then they'd probably better find a way to make the UA-cam game work. Or find new jobs.
when I was watching the video and they said they wanted to make television quality content, my genuine reaction was to say "why?" out loud. I understand wanting to grow as creators and creative people but I think there's validity in recognizing what you're good at and what people recognize you for and what's best for the long run.
it's like they decided they want to make black and white silent films -- why dive into obsolete media formats like TV shows? They were part of the new media but didn't want to be.
@@jipvanleyenhorst4834but it’s just crazy. When I was a kid, I had a dream to be an astronaut. I’m an English professor now. I wouldn’t go up to my boss and tell her “this has been fun, but I’d really like to go to space instead. You’ll fund that for me, right?” Sometimes you end up on a different path than you dreamed when you were a child. I can’t keep my current job AND go to space. It doesn’t make sense, having your cake and eating it too is a nonsensical goal. They didn’t think this through at all
they did update and say the first episode of each season would be free on youtube. All of their current youtube channel content would remain as is. The rest would be behind a paywall. It still didnt do well tho. I will say I cycle thru pay services each month... like one month hulu, one month disney plus, one month netflix ect. and i keep track of shows and just binge and catch up or pirate it personally.
Loving this Voidzilla concept. A channel that gives you free reign to explore whatever takes your fancy is a great idea. Made me laugh to find out the black background is the result of a file loss rather well thought artistic choice. It's perfect.
The iShowMeat scammers hacked him and are holding the 10mil studio folder hostage. Coffee has to play their newest scam game and beat it in order to get the files back. Spoiler: It's buggy and will not let you beat the final boss. GOTCHA! GOTCHA!
FFS, with UA-cam Members, Patreon, Nebula, Floatplane, you got TONs of way to get more money and/or add better quality videos without the bad side of UA-cam like demonitisation and limited ToS. That said, none of them can replace UA-cam as the main source to get new people into your content. So they shoot themselves out of that side and make a joke of themselves because damn the Nebula guys really have opportunities to make high-quality series, and it's a whole streaming service made by UA-camrs so you pay a subscription for premium content from them.
@@pavichokche tbh, that's what a lot of the "community" was expecting when they were doing a literal count down to the "big news for the watcher community." That ended up being an extended "f u, pay me." They thought they were going to announce either: They were partnering with Nebula (which would put one of their series behind the paywall, Puppet History) Creating a new "collective" with the Try Guys. Notibly if Watcher and Try Guys, two popular channels with a lot of fan overlap had said they were doing this as a joint venture and it wasn't handled like shit, it probably would have gone over much better. A lot of sentiment in the community is one of price sensitivity, that Watcher doesn't put out enough content a month to justify $6. Maybe $2, but I could easily see that changing if Try Guys were included. or potentially a merger with Mythical , as they are either friends of R&L or friends of friends and they have done business in the past. Again, this might end up happening now because they tanked all sentiment and goodwill of their company so Mythical coming in as their savior with an investment might be the best they can hope for.
@@pavichokche No. Nebula really is the only company selling what they say. I cannot subscribe to the platform for the same reason I don't subscribe to anything, but after Patreon cut a bunch of supports for content creators, only Nebula remains as "by creators, for creators" financial system. Do I believe it 100%? Not at all, but in a world where we keep choosing lesser evils, god DAMN Nebula must be the only way out for high quality content... What a world we live in...
Back then, there were a very popular group of content creators, hiding behind of meme of a glitch known as "rocket jump", later they moved on and reassembled under "Corridor Crew" banner… One day they moved under YT premium… And disappeared from the general audience's sight…
bro the internet is just becoming cable again. how many subscription model services do we really need at this point. I miss the hell out of one-time purchases.
In regards to the weird language they used as well, Steven Lim the guy who said that (as much as I loved the shows he used to make) I've noticed has this approach, and i wouldn't be surprised if this was his idea. He was always so obsessed with views, getting in with the elite (i.e. showing off his best mate Simu Liu as much as possible) being the best CEO and all that silicon valley stuff. So not at all surprised.
I was JUST thinking about that. This feels like a straight up Steven decision that he talked the others into. But I disagree that it's a status thing as much as it's a "bigger and better" thing where he feels stifled by the limited budget they have to work with currently. He's always been on about wanting to make the next season of [insert show] bigger and higher quality and has consistently had to tone it down due to budget constraints. But I think this was the completely wrong way to try and remedy that and I wish he had more pushback from the other team members at the studio.
He's Definitely a tech Bro. He has a Tesla after all.. bet he talks about crypto too much I never liked him. Always gave me the creeps. The vibe was not it.
He really does come off as an out of touch tech bro😕 there’s been some like weird and off putting things in the past that have shown up in videos but nothing overly crazy but it wouldn’t surprise me if he’s the one that really pushed this instead of looking at other (probably more viable) options.
Great video Coffee, the sound balancing was a bit off as you seemed to be very quiet and then I nearly blew the house down with the clip you shown. Hope this helps at all and keep up the good work on reporting.
I think a more viable way to do this would have been for them to say “we’re going to paywall every second video in order to increase out revenue while still providing content to our audience members who cannot afford paywalled content.”. Or they could do a third of their content.
I was a bit stunned when I saw that video yesterday. My first thought was "It's a little late to be making an april fool's joke" and then the pin dropped that they were being serious. I like their content for Mystery Files and Puppet History, and I do understand the need to keep revenue flowing but this...was one of the most alienating experiences I've had online since the Fine Bros fiasco, and I'm not even subscribed to them. I think they may have forgotten that a huge portion of youtube watchers and especially their followers are more than likely kids and college age students who either need that six dollars to eat or get medicine, or are kids and don't have cash flow to drop on a youtube channel turned streaming service. I firmly believe that if they rework their website this could actually work. They have/had twelve thousand patrons, that was their opportunity right there. Patreon takes a percentage of the cash made by whoever uses their website, so instead of paywalling their content from both patreons and youtube viewers, their streaming service should BE the new patreon. Encourage their patreon members to shift their support to a website where all the revenue made goes into paychecks and production value. Film in a way where that streaming site gets the new seasons first, and then like a month after it's been up with exclusive access, drip the new seasons onto youtube for additional ad revenue while the next season is being premiered on their streaming site. I feel like this would've been an easier pitch to work with. The patreon members now know that every cent is going to the creators they like, and the rest of the broke and underage world gets good content from users they are fans of. This move just doesn't make sense no matter how I turn it about in my head, and I do hope they rethink how to approach this because it's not going well and I DO want them to succeed. Edit: Watcher released an update video that took some of my suggestions on board. I have no doubt that others were echoing the same thoughts I had, but it's a relief to see that they reconsidered their choice. I hope they find that middle ground that lets them properly fund their creativity and share it with the world.
@@peytonalexander5300 Understood, and I agree. If they have that many patreon members, then it could definitely work to encourage them to shift their support there. Hell, toss in videos that would have to be heavily censored by youtube and make them stream exclusives. Though, probably most importantly, make a community poll expressing this idea for a streaming site and see what the community actually wants. Gauge your audience before you drop a massive bomb out of nowhere on them. Not many people handle this kind abrupt and massive change well, as shown by the reaction on the PR nightmare that is their last video.
@@peytonalexander5300Do they? I'm not subscribed but most Patreon trackers are saying they have about 5,700 rn down from a high of 6,500ish. Either way you're right that it strengthens the point, and seeing how big of a dip they've taken is... Cathartic. Maybe once they start losing money hand over fist they'll pull their heads out of their assholes and realise how big a mistake they've made.
Money is not the issue, it never was. If it was, Lim wouldn't have been paying thousands to fly private. Mari (Ryan's wife) couldn't afford to stay unemployed while getting showered with luxury gifts (that big ass gucci bag really stuck with me sorry lmao). They've been wildly mismanaging their finances for personal consumption while blaming the business for it, even though the Patreon donors alone earns them roughly a 100k per month. They have a shit ton of sponsorships not only from brands but from a whole ass state itself (Montana). Their merch are almost always sold out, and most of their videos have millions of views that pulls in a large sum of money as well. Hell that stupid leaving UA-cam video alone had FIVE ad breaks, ironic considering they pointed out in that same video how they don't wanna rely on ads for their earnings🤡
Adding another app into the mix is probably more of an issue than ppl realize. Joe Rogan only moved to Spotify and barely maintained 60% of his subscribers from YT. Maybe age plays a role, but there are some streamers I watch who have started signing deals with other platforms, and they usually have to do a certain number of streams that are exclusive to one platform. Personally, I am okay with just missing those episodes. I'm not gonna sign up for Twitch or Rumble, just to potentially watch a few xtra streams per month. As far as the money goes, I can do $6 a month and I think most people can. The problem is, I have no interest in adding another autopay-monthly subscription into the mix. I have an Cct that I use almost exclusively for my online subscriptions and purchases and I don't keep great track of it. Normally, I'll make sure there's a minimum of $40 in it, but I know I'll forget about a $6 monthly charge because I know I won't go to their new platform that often. I'll forget the icon is even on the Home screen and eventually, I'll eat a $35 overdraft because I got charged $6 a week after my UA-cam, Hulu and Netflix subscriptions all processed. Not to mention, I was really only watching the "Are You Scared" or True Crime videos, which they weren't super consistent about putting out. Sometimes I'd get 2 months of notifications before there was a vid I had any interest in watching.
The thing with Watcher being a streaming service is that, while they have higher quality production this is like high quality for A UA-cam channel. Not high quality for like more mainstream HBO or Netflix or Disney show of smiliar nature. Which is why, this looks ludicrus. also, they're, like you've noted taking away something that used to be for free and putting it behind paywall, and they were already doing good money. From Patreon and ad-sense and sponorships and also merch. Because they're making pretty pricey merch too. So they have a LOT of sources of income here. Charlie pointed it out too in his video.
"Eat the rich.. check out my overpriced shoes made by child labor!" Pretty sure they don't believe in any of the nonsense they're spouting, they just say it to please their audience.
The one known for having that "eat the rich, piracy is good, you can steal a little as a treat" attitude is Shane. The one who made the shoes comment is Ryan. People are most surprised about Shane going along with this for a reason, the other 2 are less surprising.
Well as Steven (CEO of Watcher) is very clearly not good for video ideas and is just business minded. I have a feeling he is the silicon valley 'bro' with this utterly terrible idea. Hope he leaves Watcher and they continue business with someone else as CEO.
He's a dumb businessman because you aren't supposed to make it more difficult for current and, more importantly, potential customers from knowing about and accessing your product. You are supposed to try make it easier.
@@vanessac1721 these former buzzfeed people benefit massively from their eco system( a million subs outta the gate). When they make it out they think they "know something". Buzzfeed had 100 times the total views of any one show but they never pay-walled properly cus it would drive people off. Cus the views are worth more than competing with netflix and amazon prime or disney+// both of which you can get bundled with other services. They could have gotten more sponsors as well.
BTW: Watcher is offering 30% off to everyone for their streaming service, so I guess that means the “40% off” for patrons is actually a 10% difference. 💀
So it's not even worth subbing to their patreon. Oh wow a 10% difference... Totally makes up for subbing to their streaming service while subbing to their patreon 😒🤡🤡 it doesn't clash with each other at all.... 😒
Not even Hollywood asks viewers to pay twice for *one show*. If they can’t figure out how to make that model work (and I’ve worked in the industry for decades and know decision makers-and how much they love money), then a few young dudes aren’t going to figure out how to make that model work with far less budget. C’mon…
@@jaysonx5576 the silicon valley dude is a well made prediction , boy did grab for the stars and only did catch some bird s!ht
Man they already have a Patreon and apparently still not enough to cover for Steven's expensive steaks covered in gold leaf.
Redbar
When you cultivate an audience that embraces "Eat the Rich" you can't be shocked or mad when your audience starts to cannibalize you for making a greedy business decision.
"Eat the Rich" until they themselves become rich, hypocrisy at its finest
Absolute banger
yeah. their entire audience is leftist millennials and gen z-ers. can’t we just cut back on the $1K sushi and stick to puppet history and true crime?
Kid named Rich:
@@turolretarkid named eat: 💰💲
A creator can't tell a fan what's affordable for that fan.
👏👏👏
This comment should have the most likes. It's the most on point comment of this paywall situation.
Yes!! If they even didn’t say the words it’s 5.99 everyone can afford that. Yes I have 6$ to spare but why would I want to spend 6$ a month on a UA-cam channel that only makes 12 episodes a year of the only 2 shows I watch. And just to be fair yeah puppet history gets more videos than ghost files and mystery files but honestly mystery and ghost are the big ones that pull in the views but they have the least amount of episodes. We watched the boys when it was them in essentially a closet with a script and shitty animations on screen and that was fine
Absolutely. However, if they’d priced it at 2.99, I think they could’ve called it affordable, lol.
A fan can't tell a creator where his content should be
The fact that they didn’t give a free subscription to their Patreon backers is mind-boggling, and shows that they didn’t really think this through.
I've also heard they're denying refund requests to patrons, and have turned off comments over on Patreon.
If anyone wants a refund they have to go through Patreon itself citing violation of terms of agreement iirc, since Watcher is saying, "no, we are keeping your money!!"
I also can't believe they are potentially keeping the Patreon up.... For what? People who are gonna subscribe to your streaming site are only gonna be the die hard fans or those who want and are able to support small businesses/art.... It seems insanely greedy and out of touch
I don't think it's that they didn't think it through, I think they just expected their fans to pony up without questioning it. What's another sub when you have so many already...
I hope every single patron disputes it with Patreon and gets their money back… maybe THEN they will realize what a fuck ass decision this was
@peytonmcvey2289 also saw from a reddit post they turned off patreon comments. We gotta spread around to dispute directly with Patreon, not with Watcher for a refund. I've been commenting on everything I see on it to do so.
Buzzfeed unsolved literally PEAK when it's just blue and yellow subtitles talking to each other, nobody gives a shit about the "high quality production"
true lmao
I do miss the blue and yellow text.
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.
🤝🤝🤝
You’re so right they need to cut the bloat if they want to survive they need to figure out what exactly makes them successful and I can tell you it’s not “tv level production”
This is the comment that sums it all up. Big facts.
Perfectly said!!
I watch a few of their shows and I am shocked they have 20 employees!!!
They literally called us poor and broke up with us
They're back
@@LindaC616And they still think that we're poor,but still need some of us at least... :D
@@4kach24 right. They offered to leave old content on UA-cam as well as publish new content on UA-cam one month later and have apologized to the patreon and offered a full refund
“Literally” never uttered the word “poor”
@@roycedot Literally, did you know literally isn't only used literally anymore? It can also be used as a way to say something in a very exaggerated way?
"six dollars a month is absolutely affordable for absolutely everybody," says the guy who drives a tesla and has multiple shows dedicated to jet hopping around the world to eat meals that cost more than some people's rent
It’s $3.50 / mo…
@@roycedotthey literally showed $6 in the video
@@roycedot it was 5.99 a month regular, they had an early adoption special that cut it down by 40 percent which might be what youre seeing
not sure how you missed the 5.99 number since it was a focus of the damn video
And it feels like this is Stevens idea
@@anako790 everyone pinning everything on steven lim feels wildly parasocial to me tbh
being the ceo doesnt mean he can just force company changes that the other founders object to. people are acting like hes got the other two in dog kennels or like hes kidnapped their families to force them to agree to this streamer bullshit or something. they all had to think this was the way to go or nothing would have happened because if they really had that big of an issue with it, they could have stopped it before we ever knew
What gets to me the most about this whole fiasco is that they have two shows that are entirely dependent on fans submitting stories for them to read for free. They put out a call for one of them just last month and have paywalled fans from seeing their own work without any prior warning.
That's such a good point, and with what they said in their most recent video, the fans who's questions were picked won't even be able to see the content till a month later unless they're trying to drop some dough
The important question is "Will they have ukuleles in their inevitable apology video?"
No. My. God. Let’s be honest tho, Ballinger really owned that cringe so hard I doubt it can be replicated; maybe a 3-man jug band? I’m intrigued now.
All aboard the toxic gossip train! 🚂
🎶 _Do not diddle kids, it's no good diddling kids._ 🎶
Don’t forget the gray hoodies
😂😂😂😂
Nebula, an entire network of high-profile creators, is only 5$/month.......
Honestly if Watcher announced they were joining Nebula and creating a couple exclusive shows there, in addition to their UA-cam content, then they'd have probably gotten very little pushback if any at all. Nebula's a bargain but it has to be to compete with all the other established streaming platforms.
Watcher's fumble reminds me of how RoosterTeeth eventually fell apart because they chased aggressive growth and bloated their platform with unnecessary podcasts when most people only cared about their animation or FunHaus.
I was looking for this comment! Nebula is still cooking for a reason. The creators there usually aren't posting exclusively on Nebula either, but still creating exclusive videos and series all the time. There's hardly any pushback.
Why make a whole new streaming service, pitch to one that already exists and would allow you much more creative freedom!!!
also, some are just nebula first, YT a week later or so, and they remove the product placements @@adultcool2395
when i finally got a nebula subscription, i was happily shocked to discover how many of the creators i already loved where waiting for me there, it was amazing! and i do actually go watch some of their nebula versions even of videos they have up for free, because they're able to include stuff in those videos which youtube and advertisers would throw a fit over otherwise. every time Jacob Geller reminds me to watch his latest video on Nebula, i immediately go and do just that (and finish the youtube vid too - give him that sweet watch time) because it's genuinely worth it. i only wish i could comment, but i also know that moderating comments would be a massive headache and probably expensive to boot - i moderate for a comparatively small art community on discord and that still gets to be exhausting sometimes... but i digress. that's why the dual posting system works so well - content creators can get two revenue streams, and one version lets them make videos more true to their vision, and the other gives them access to their community to receive feedback and gauge what viewers are interested in.
i don't have a horse in this race but Nebula is literally right there lmao. what were they thinking??
Exactly what I was thinking. I’m only paying 30$ a year for Nebula and they want almost twice that per year for their own streaming service.
i think it's incredibly direspectful of them to say "everyone can afford this" while being on flights regularly enough to discuss it as a casual, biweekly activity. it's just giving out of touch with the reality of most of their fans
They heard that. Apology video just dropped
Exactly. There was a time in my life when I could NOT afford that
There was literally a time in uni when I only had $.23 in my bank account at the end of the month. Meanwhile all of my friends kept saying things like “everyone can afford this” or “doing this isn’t that expensive”. Yes, for some people it absolutely is, and until they personally go through it some people will never get it.
@Wtfamidoing2970 you just described my high school years and the first 2 years of grad school for me. Once a kid stiffed me the $5 an hour that I asked for as a tutor. I saw him emerging from McDonald's later, because it was around the corner from my house. I thought "McDonald's is where I eat when I *do* have money" 😔
@@LindaC616 oh my goodness this. One of my “friends” at the time got upset I wanted money back I had leant to her months prior and gave me such an attitude about it. Like ma’am, you post daily about going to Starbucks, meanwhile I’m literally eating pb&j and need that money to buy more bread, but go off 😂 I remember when I finally got back on my feet and was able to afford my first pizza and nearly cried 😂 It’s bad, and with the inflation now I can’t even begin to imagine how bad it would be if I was back at that point in life again. Like it’s unreal how much money I’m dropping for everyday necessities anymore, so I stopped any type of “frivolous” purchases as I’m legitimately afraid of being back there again.
They bragged about how they would be able to put this TV show level of quality for all of their shows when, ironically enough, that was the exact reason I was beginning to lose interest in watching their channel before their "announcement". With their newest seasons of Ghost Files and Mystery Files - yeah, they have a bigger set and all of these new fancy gizmos - but everything else felt phoned in. One of my favorite series they did was Too Many Spirits, which was literally just them getting drunk in their backyard and telling ghost stories. That dynamic that I initially came for and loved from Buzzfeed Unsolved and shows like that slowly disappeared when they started to double down on being more like TV.
Just, man. They built their entire brand on interacting with their audience (taking suggestions from their viewers, live shows, Q&As, reblogging fan memes on their tumblr), and it sucks that what they really wanted from us was more money. Parasocial relationships are weird.
Yeah I stopped watching just before they switched to watcher because what the two of them had just wasn’t really there as much anymore and it didn’t feel like the thing actually liked
one thing that scratched me the wrong way is that their new productions have a higher cost - say they hired an animator and costume designer for a show that is basically shane talking to ryan just like on buzzfeed - but theres no real quality improvement on the type of content itself, it just boils down to them talking, no matter how much money they invest in sets and illustrations. hell they have specific directors and editors hired to deal with brand sponsorships. and the audience that already pays them a lot for content (patreon, lives, etc) has to pay for more bc of your frivolous desires? of what only they consider a improvement of content?
@@luabueno7813 this is a really good point
Rhett and Link saying they're done pitching shows to be on TV and putting more time into their own channel content (for 0.00/month) is how creators who respect/appreciate their fanbase act. Not whatever the f this greed is.
Rhett and Link 💙💙🙏🏾
To be fair, it's easy to say that when your pitches fail or they're successful...with the caveat that you change everything that made it yours. Please believe, if it worked out the way they wanted, they would've been out too.
Tbf it's pretty easy for Rhett and Link to have humility when GMM is.. a very.. mellow low key show with.. nothing much happening. They're probably pretty thankful that they've garnered.. ANY success.
@@ohko3892 couldn't disagree more. They're UA-cam legends (Rhett and the beautiful Mr. link neal), these fools are just greedy goblins reproducing content that has been done 500x before on 20 different platforms.
It’s not greed any more than you asking for a raise at work. It’s stupid, but it isn’t greed.
"There's this idea that better production equals a better experience."
Meanwhile i'm here watching an unshaven scraggle bearded man who looks like he just woke up in a black void and i'm not watching Watcher.
😂
Yup, same here
Yup, same here
You can't throw enough money behind something and turn it into Prestige TV, the same way you can't get nine women pregnant and hope for a baby in a month.
Their content is super mid. It's mostly them making jokes to each other and trying to act like it wasn't in the script while telling ghost stories. It's not content I would want to watch in the first place, much less pay money specifically for it. They're so full of themselves
The first 'Watcher TV exclusive' leaked btw; its 8 minutes of Ryan rambling pretty deadpan about what its like to film an episode of Ghost Files, including how they fake their 'first impressions' of the place, and how the entire cast & crew went to the cinema to watch Dune 2. He also calls one fast food chain "ok, but not better than [other fast food chain]". He opens the video with "this might be a series, might be a one off, who knows" so...yeah. Really promising TV quality productions over there. Definitely worth the $1.50 it costs ($6/month with 1 video/week)
It's giving Jake Paul and Ninja's "exclusive" series
You doin the LORT'S work here
last month on Patreon they had 5,730 subscribers, they would've made $28,650 in a single month if every member paid $5, however it should be noted most people paid between $10 & $25 dollars so the amount is closer to $57,300+.
(for a single year using their worst performing month, they would make between $343,800 and $687,600 on patreon alone)
looking at the Watcher's main channel alone they have an rpm between 6 & 8.5. in this year alone they have published 22 videos grossing more than 18,324,000 views. Since January, they would have made between $109,944 and $155,754.
if we take into account Charlie's(Penguinz0) statements about ad rates we can assume that every ad read gave them $10,000 to $25,000. In 22 videos since the start of January they have had 10 ads, since most of the videos are bloopers from other ones instead of actual content. This would place ad revenue between $100,000 and $250,000. If we continue this trend, 10ads/4months, they would have 30 ads ranging from $300,000 to $750,000 a year.
in total, they would have made anywhere between $324,544 and $634,954 since January and will make roughly $973,632 to $1,904,862.
again these are all with conservative numbers.
they had absolutely no need.
what they needed to do was film more videos, because in no world are these videos "worth" $6, the general script is mid, and they mostly just have fun. I know its part of their brand but the video ideas are so basic they could film multiple videos in a week, (if it takes 4 hours to film and they work a 9/5) they would be able to film 10 videos a week, or 8 if they want to dedicate one day to ad reads and podcasting.
they have 15+ staff mentioned in the videos, which is again absolutely ridiculous to have production coordinators, and heads of development, production, post production, etc. when the work these videos take is not a lot.
they literally stand in front of a pulldown board and lecture you about really common anomalies that everyone has heard before.
so many other youtubers make this content in a 1-2 person team bc its really not that difficult, especially when all of the information is on wikipedia
Thank you for the break down here. Hugely agree it doesn’t make sense to have such a large team in all honesty
Steven Lim really messed up with his Instagram post that he took hours to edit. It threw Napalm on a dumpster fire by saying "For those fans who got us here, we really appreciate your viewership. For those who WANT to continue watching us...." which can be roughly interpreted as "For those fans who got us here (and are no longer needed).... For those who WANT to continue watching (which are the real fans and are the super bestest)."
People were mad before, but once he posted that cringe everything went into top effing gear.
What a tool 😂
Ew, fr? 💀
@@MagisterialVoyager ya.
@@milhousevanhoutan9235 Unfortunately you are not the first person to point out Steven Lim’s… IDK. Obsession with number and fame? I personally think it’s really gross. But hey he finally showed his true character.
Hope they fire him or get him out of the group
Remember, The Professor would want us to pirate paywalled content. Do it for him.
No need. All past content t will be kept on YT and platform will get things one month in advance. Apology video just dropped
@@LindaC616awww, how are we gonna do the performative activism to state our point then?
@@ZBBBlL girl wtf are you on. literally stfu. this isn't performative activism. you clearly don't know what that word means lmao did you just learn about it on tiktok last month or something
@@LindaC616oh well all is forgiven then
They’re trying to do what collegehumor successfully did with dropout, except dropout has always continued to post a significant amount of their content up on youtube and has clearly put the money from subscriptions to use, while watcher has not made any indication of evolving its programing to make subscriptions worth it
Fr that bothered me as well - they wanted to LEAVE youtube for good! That’s not good marketing like CollegeHumor had with their snippets of their shows. We’re just expected to follow them into the streaming service and HOPE it’s good.
Dropout was also a mistake imo
@@Lamsus854 your opinion is valid, but I personally enjoy the content. There’s always a new show to discover (as someone who mainly joined for Game Changer) and they regularly update them.
I was just thinking about dropout. At least with dropout it’s a service with so many different “shows”. And they also know their fans and know fans wait until after a show is done airing, spend five bucks, and binge the series. That or rich dnd nerds having a full subscription watching dimension 20 on there
@@Lamsus854As someone who is subscribed to dropout your welcome to your opinion, but it is objectively wrong.
Although we international viewers from developing countries may not be the biggest percentage of subscribers, it still hurt to be overlooked like this, because even when six dollars isn´t that much for them, that amount of money at least cuadruples in my country, so for people here is the equivalent of paying almost 30 dollars for what it is basically a paywalled youtube channel.
absolutely, and that amount is a huge part of our "disposable income" which isn't disposable at all, most people in developing countries don't have disposable income, but sacrifice lower needs to spend on something they enjoy.
A pair of shoes i'm in love with means i should not spend on taxis for the next 3 months.
I hadn't even heard about the poor Patrons. The fact they wouldn't be grandfathered into the new streaming service is WILD, I'd be pissed too
a 40% discount is f*cking wild man. I'd be INFURIATED
I didn't even know they had a patreon, if it was actually properly advertised they may not have needed to make such a decision
@@alexd1730they have 12738 members… even if everyone was at 5 dollars, that’s 63k a year… for a lot of people, that’s a full time job… and we know that many pay more then the 5 dollars
@@alexd1730it has 12000 members ☠️ that’s a huge number
I was asking myself about the Patreon, because one would assume that if you paywall your stuff, you would also suspend your Patreon. And I was on the fence about calling this move "greed", because I thought that if they were getting rid of Patreon too, then there must be something more behind it.....but they're keeping their 60k per month AT MINIMUM Patreon AND offering a shitty discount to them instead of including the subscription in their base tier AND they also want the subscription money.
If that's not PURE greed I don't know what it is, they completely compromised their image and the persona they were playing at this point(whom everyone thought was their genuine personality), bye bitch lol
"it's only $6 a month, it's affordable"... time to get in line with all the other subscription services we have to pay for these days
you don't HAVE to subscribe to anything
@@britt678sadly u do tho, Crickets (embroidery/sticker/general arts and crafts gizmo) is 10 bucks a month for the software. To play PlayStation games on your ps5 u need PlayStation plus AND internet. You HAVE to have car insurance, you HAVE to pay your rent, you HAVE to pay your water etc. there’s a NUMBER “subscriptions” you have to pay.
@@britt678including watcher. Which is why this is a bad idea
@britt678 of course, that's why nobody is going to subscribe to Watcher. Other services provide more stuff for the money; spending ANOTHER 6 a month for puppet history, ghost files, and mystery files just isn't a value proposition I or apparently anyone else who likes Ryan and Shane find appealing.
Big ol NAH from me, bro
Steven definitely has that Silicon Valley brain rot. During that whole “soft launch” speech I was constantly expecting the next words out of his mouth to be “liquidity pool”
Almost everything about Steven rubs me the wrong way. He doesn’t have the same “genuineness” that Shane and Ryan do. He seems very aloof and self absorbed
Steven is also Coffee's name, so this was a whiplash moment lol
Steven seems to be in it to take money from fans to fund his lavish lifestyle, while Shane and Ryan do it because they actually like doing content.
Some people don't understand that the difference between FREE and $0.01 is monumental. The effort that it takes me to pull out my wallet and enter a 16 digit number to subscribe to your service is too much of a hassle just by itself.
Amen
I think sideplus is the best example of paying extra for bts, extra videos and seeing things UA-cam wouldn't allow aswell i think a exclusive podcast they do
100% agree. Make me do shit and shit. Already too much.
The fact each episode of ghost files costs them HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS Of dollars is wild with 10+ people being jetted to each location. They have bloated so much and production gone through the roof. It’s 2 dudes ghost hunting, it should not take the cost of a nice house!
Seriously, that level of production staff is like from Ghost Hunters in 2004. WTF?
Bloat is often the reason for lower quality or greedy monetisation. I mean, look at fucking video games, which cost like 500 mil to make and then not even looking better than some 5 dude indie game.
They are probably creating jobs for all their mates and expecting us to pay for it. Ridiculous.
Really??!?
They Def could have budgeted and made that for 10k while still having the quality. Maybe even cheaper. They where burning cash.
@@houdini329 im sorry but if all you care about is graphics then its kind of a mid take
It's not a matter of if you HAVE $6, it's a matter of if it's WORTH $6. I think that's where the major flaw in their thinking comes from.
Also, people have ongoing expenses, so it's not like going from $0 per month to $6 a month. If they have Netflix and Disney Plus, and Xbox Gamepass...
What about people in less prosperous countries where $6 could be groceries for a week? Not everyone lives in a wealthy nation and have disposable income 😢
@@happycamper4thewin True, but I doubt that's their target audience
Good insight. And you’re absolutely right. Yes, obviously “most” people do have the ability to spend $6 on something entertainment-related. But, are they willing to spend it on something they used to get for free, doesn’t offer anything “better” than what people could get elsewhere for free, and is not a good value in and of itself when compared to competitive services
@@Day-ZDuke I liked their content when it was free and just had to eat some ads from UA-cam, but for six dollars...
No, a dollars or two extra and its the price of every other streaming Services that has lote more content.
I unsubscribed from them and stopped all patron payments. This is greed pure and simple. I’m surprised Shane agreed to this
Even if he didn't, he's not the CEO and doesn't have that kind of power. The only one that holds CEO status is Steven and beyond that it's 2 to 1. If Ryan and Steven are on board and Shane didn't want it? Too bad, so sad.
@@mybrainis3freezedriedpeas897 What's weird to me is that I didn't realize that Steven is the sole CEO now, they used to all share that position, but it changed in January 2024
Yeah I can’t see him saying yes unless people pressured him to woah and back, him not being ceo / them not having the same cut and rights is so weird.
Shane just had a 250k wedding and you’re surprised he agreed to this? All three of them are culpable and agreed to make this decision together, not just Steven Lim
@@pokemcnmaster not shocked by that sadly yeah they messed up so badly and need to do a LOT to make it up to fans but I doubt they will
I just feel bad for the fans that submitted stories for Too Many Spirits and evidence for Ghost Files. They didn’t feel the need to pay these people. They used their fans to do their work and now told those same fans “it’s not us, it’s you”. It’s not good enough to give us content, views, likes, subscribing, commenting, buying merch, doing patreon, and live shows. You have to give us more that we can change at any time. I don’t think it’ll be long before they raise prices, then add ads, and take in sponsors again.
They're leaving past content on YT. Releasing new things on platform 1 mo in advance, then free on YT
@@LindaC616You mean the "revised" plan
Another massive issue is that Steven Lim (the third guy) wants to start making another run of Worth It, where he eats $1,000 sushi in a penthouse with his fancy friends
You mad brother?
@@ocoolwow Lol, leave it to the bootlickers to see anger where only logic is being spoken. No matter what you say, they've ruined their reputations and businesses and the adults can discuss how they did. You can go sit in a corner and suck your thumb, kiddo.
Nah he's just the fall guy. Worth it was pretty much the cash cow of buzzfeed.
I think this is them trying to add more catalogue to their paywalling. They have been planning this sh*t since that time they started deleting their back catalogue. I have no idea why they needed 30 employees in one of the costliest cities on earth. It makes no sense.
he has been out of touch for a long time
@@ocoolwow?
there was a comment i saw that basically said “we were happy even back at buzzfeed when it was just the yellow and blue subtitles. All we wanted was you”, which sums up my feelings pretty well
if they want to make high production stuff, sure thats totally up to them. but thats not what their audience wants, thats not what i wanted. i hope they find a new audience that likes their new stuff, but its just no longer what i want to watch
Broooo you are speaking mad facts
ngl hearing that comment made me a bit emotional. I love these guys since i first saw them on Buzzfeed unsolved years ago. They were my source of comfort and there was just something so fun about seeing two guys goofing off about mysterious things, whether it be talking about UFOs or traumatizing the ghost from the Sallie house. It was a simple premise, yet one that brought so much joy to people's lives.
Life got busy and i stopped watching their content, and i was thinking of getting around to watching the last few episodes of ghost files and learned about this. I don't know what to feel now. It doesn't even feel real, to see them on the end of drama of all things. Personally, i don't think Ryan & shane were heavily involved in this decision just based on what I've seen from them, it moreso looks like their CEO wanted funds to keep his irrelevant food show running, but idk. I think that's just my nostalgia speaking.
I hope the guys learn from this and keep doing what they've always done, because i'd really hate to see them gone like this. I understand their desire to go high production, but they need to understand that it's not what most of us wanted. We just wanted episodes of two guys being chaotic and twerking at ghosts, not...whatever this is. They might come back, try to roll it back and will likely get backlash for it, but so long as they're genuine in their mistake, i'd forgive them. But if they don't then..i don't know.
I just wish that things didn't have to end like this.
Honestly I think it was better on BuzzFeed
Was actually happier with the yellow and blue subtitles, honestly.
Sound, lights, editing, graphics, puppetry, they already had a production that beats most tv shows imho. They should've joined Nebula.
I watched that entire “Goodbye UA-cam” waiting for it to end with one of them go “Ha! April Fools! It’s late but whatever.” And it never happened and I was just so confused and then I got PISSED.
Even if they go “Okay sorry we won’t do the streaming service and stay on UA-cam.” I dunno if I could keep watching them cause it’s just left a sour taste.
Like when the Fine bros tried to copyright the word “react”. I haven’t watched any of their videos since.
Ooh, I was subscribed to them when that video first dropped and then proceeded to go viral. I actually didn’t watch the original video, I was following a commentary channel at the time who did cover it and I felt bad, then angry, then burst out laughing.
I couldn’t believe they acted like they were the first ones to do reaction content. One of the more successful ones, sure, that was because they had many people on their segments and people didn’t subscribe or even watch their content for them. They were behind the camera, people tuned in to witness how kids react, how teens react, how UA-camrs react, and finally how seniors react.
I don’t know how old their channel was at the time they dropped that video, I just googled it. 2007 was the year they started their channel but they didn’t start react videos until in 2010.
Which… just as I had originally thought, reacting to certain things has been around for quite a while before that but on television.
In fact, I used to watch a television series called The Smoking Gun Presents: World’s Dumbest/Strangest/etc. series that starred celebrities who usually had arrest records. Many of whom did not have an active career in Hollywood. Some of these “celebrities” would have also been called “wash-ups” when the show initially aired in 2008. These “celebrities” included Tanya Harding, a figure skate an Olympic skater who had been arrested, tried, and convicted of conspiracy to cause bodily harm to another Olympic figure skater, Nancy Karrigan. There was even a movie made about Tanya’s life including said incident and her subsequent arrest called I, Tanya.
Todd Bridges who had been a child actor in Diff’rent Strokes. Todd had become a drug addict and had been arrested for robbery. When he was released he starred in a few things here and there including appearing in a Dave Chappelle skit on his show Chappelle’s show. A few years after that he had starred in a celebrity reality show whose name escapes me. When he finally got something that he hoped would make a resurgence of his former acting career, his former co-star and fellow child actor Gary Coleman as he wanted to revitalize his own career. I will say that unlike Todd Bridges, Gary Coleman had more of a career. Sure, he didn’t have big roles but Todd Bridges really had nothing. Todd had warned Gary that if he did this for him, he had to behave and understand that Diff’rent Strokes was a popular pop culture phenomenon when they were children and Gary Coleman had one of the biggest catch phrases of all time, “Watch ya talking ‘bout…” and that other celebrities who grew up on the show will ask him to say the quote. Gary said he had understood, however, when the cast mates did start saying the quote, Gary Coleman flipped out on them. It was so bad that Todd tried to step in but quickly the two got into a huge fight and Gary was kicked off the show. Not long after that Gary had passed away.
The point I am making is this, The Fine Bros. did not start the react content as The Smoking Gun beat them by 2 years and at the time were the biggest reaction channels on UA-cam but certainly was not the first. So when they dropped that video claiming that they would start that React company it was laughable. Which is why the backlash cost them their channels (they had multiple too) because despite being the biggest, they were not the first to do react videos on television and certainly not UA-cam.
They most definitely should have realized that much before they dropped that video. So if it hadn’t worked for the Fine Bros with their millions of subscribers and videos with millions of views I don’t get why Watcher thought they would be able to get away with this.
I've seen less charismatic people recover from worse (and way more reprehensible) blunders, so I highly doubt it will kill the channel _entirely,_ but they're definitely not getting the outcome they wanted and will need to publicly eat some humble pie if they ever want to get even close to being back to where they were. And this is entirely self-inflicted, which just makes it all even funnier.
What threw me off wasn’t the paywalling - it was Watcher as a whole. The last season of Buzzfeed Unsolved was these two at their peak, mastered their craft. I was so excited to see them continue that on Watcher….but got the most random other content instead.
The true crime and investigations didn’t hit the same and came way less frequently than the random taste tests and puppet shows. If they created a higher quality version of Unsolved and really nailed it, I would follow them to a streaming service.
But they couldn’t even hold me through Watcher.
From memory the constant study and looking into murder cases was harmful for Ryan's mental health.
Branching into different content isn't bad but there was no way this would work with the audience style they have
@@juicyeboi9006 Okay that is good context that I wasn’t aware of - thanks for adding. In that case I agree, there are other ways to crowdfund money for higher quality. Or perhaps outsource the Ryan and Shane dynamic to another couple that could take on that research? Strengthen the niche of their content or move to their own domain and run Google ads, post whatever content they want from there. Hindsight is 20/20 I guess.
The main reason they didn't continue Unsolved on Watcher was that it's Buzzfeed property. Take Try Guys, they had to buy that brand from Buzzfeed. I don't know what arrangement Watcher had with Buzzfeed, but I'm assuming it's something like can't make that content with some rules.
@@N0noy1989Buzzfeed doesnt own true crime tho, they just couldve done the same under a new name, and honestly it wasnt. Ghost Files was pretty much the only good show on it and maybe Puppet history. Doesnt matter anymore tho
I like thier puppet history but that's cuz I'm a history dork
I love how quickly they backtracked on removing old eps from youtube, lol.
Beetlejuice cartoon
@@KnightSoulsGBeetlejuice cartoon!:D
You mean doubled down
@@Mr-pn2ehNo, I mean they were going to remove their back catalog from UA-cam at first, and very transparently back-tracked and said "Whaaaat?? We never said that u sillies!" When the backlash hit.
yeah, that would of been just a shot to the foot of they went though with that plan. Having the back catalog on YT and shorts is how many indies are getting people to sign up for their services
Steven Lim. That’s your tech bro ceo who made this decision
Well weren’t all of them involved in this decision?
Ryan and Shane depend on him a weird amount. No one even came to the channel for him, but Shane and Ryan depended on him for pitching for producers when they first started the channel.
@@Googledebunkerapparently he is the sole CEO now so yeah no it would be his decision
@@AsdfGhjkl-bd5mhyeah it’s weird I stopped watching them because he gave me such hell no vibes
As an OG Unsolved fan, this felt like a major betrayal. I know they don't owe anyone anything, but there is a weird consumer phenomenon where people tend to react negatively when people suddenly charge money for something that has been provided for free for literal YEARS. I hope they walk it back, but I'm not at all hopeful. This was an idiotic idea packaged and delivered in a shit stained middlefinger-shaped box imo.
They will. Probably too late when they start losing money on the daily.
that sounds like parasocial
@@TheManinBlack9054 lol...fucking HOW??
@@TheManinBlack9054sounds like paranormal
og unsolved fan, and watching the entire video, I never expected everyone to hate so bad. I literally thought it was a great idea. I wasn't planning on paying but figured they are catering to their core fans. idk
Interestingly, Ryan is the only one deleting Instagram comments. Shane probably isn't on there much to notice and would likely leave it up and take the L. Steven is getting ROASTED harder than whiskey-marinaded, gold-leaf-covered Japanese Kobe Steak.
LMFAO, I get the last reference.
Never really liked him. Tolerated him for shane and ryan's sake. He was just "rich guy" vibes to me. He's eaten more gold that I've even laid eyes on.
So much of this just feels like them showing their true colors. I used to respect ryan (and shane, not steven tho guys always been a self centered rich dirtbag) but to hear he's deleting negative comments? yeah, that tracks.
Ryan has always struck me as someone who sticks up for people in situations he shouldn't, I think Ryan doesn't really know who his friend really is
@@CrazyDlamondare Ryan and Steven related? I thought they were cousins
To be perfectly honest, as someone who’s followed Shane and Ryan from Buzzfeed to Watcher , I don’t know how their reputation can come back from this. Even if they carefully craft the best apology video in existence, they’ve effectively ousted themselves as rich dudes super out of touch with their fanbase and too irresponsible to run a business of this size.
Edit:just watched the update video. Even that doesn’t clear anything up about how they’ll be going forward and it feels like a forced script reading. Fml 🤦♂️ I really liked these guys.
The irony that I’m shocked no one has mentioned yet is that THEY’RE ALREADY ON HBO MAX. They’re on UA-cam, they get ad rev, they have Patreon, and they’re in HBO Max. Good lord how much are they spending?
i couldnt find it with a cursory search, only thing i could find was The Watcher tv show? i dont think they have an HBO show, but yes, they have YT, ad rev, and Patreon, along w expensive merch ($50-$80) for a sweatshirt, which already gross a high amnt
The stuff that is on big platforms is the old Buzzfeed stuff, which they don't own.
I've been following the backlash all day, and boy u know it's something when coffee gets on it in under 24 hrs.
😂😂...correction ... When "void" gets on it .
i still cant believe they did this, what a dumb decision
Same. I did not expect coffee to speak on this. I’m glad he did and I agree with his take.
Moist has as well 😂
now I only need to wait for Mutahar to hear his thoughts as well 😂
As someone who's been loosely following them for many years, I still prefer the low budget "two guys with a gopro yelling at imaginary ghosts in an old house" type content that made them famous, and I don't care very much about the other stuff, regardless of how high the quality may be. Hoping they go back to that and maybe work on a netflix pitch if they want a tv show, or something.
And I love their crime documentaries too. I think I fell off once they went to Watcher and Steven Lim was involved
@@itachidattebayoyeah. i used to love unsolved but i preferred low budget content, which is why i basically only watched puppet history and… nothing else.
@@itachidattebayo steven lim was fine at first and then with their whole horror stories sitting in the yard was fine, that series was fun UNTIL Steven started acting really just unneccesarily pissed off towards the bartender they brought in. It was HELLA uncomfortable. After that i tried to avoid anything with Steven in it cause I don't want that feeling of unfriendly conflict.
@@JerryAndSteve wait which episode of too many spirits was this? I've watched some of their content like 1-2 years ago and stopped cause of uni. Was Steven actually acting weird with the bartender?
I think they want to make higher production quality content, like it'll scratch a creative itch for them or something. But none of us asked for that. We actually asked for less lol. So if they want to make Netflix-style content, then they should find the money to fund it themselves through sponsors, ads, gofundme, whatever.
They could produce a high quality TV series that will only be available to the higher tier Patrons to maybe try to entice fans to subscribe to a higher tier. Or like I've said, do a kickstarter or gofundme or find a good sponsor that will fund the project or a company to collab with. SO MANY OPTIONS that do not involve asking their poor college age viewers to pay for their expensive dinners and fancy equipment.
The fact that the Patrons wouldn't be given a sub to this new service is such a kick in the teeth. It somehow keeps getting more insulting the more I hear about the whole thing
I've been a Watcher Patron since day one, and have been monitoring the situation on their Patreon posts and in their Discord. I would disagree with the statement that Patrons hate the change even more than non-Patrons; most of the people defending Watcher or even supporting the change are follow long-term Patrons, especially those at higher membership tiers. Most of the Patron backlash I've seen comes from 1) $5 members, for whom the streamer is a sizeable price hike, and 2) people who paid for an annual membership, and are now watching half the stuff they paid for get canceled and replaced with a podcast they didn't ask for.
The Discord's been a hot mess. There's been back-and-forths between people angry about the streamer and people defending the streamer. The moderators (who have been doing this for years, unpaid) have been running ragged trying to keep the backlash under control.
I firmly believe that the main reason why these people are defending Watcher is the sunk-cost fallacy. They've spent years watching every piece of Patreon-exclusive content, they've been doing unpaid fan labor for these guys, and they've given Watcher hundreds if not thousands of dollars. They don't want to hear the critics out, because if the critics are right, it means that all that time, work, and money essentially went to waste.
"Anyone can afford it!"
My disability check disagrees. I don't have/can't afford Netflix [or any similar service] or even cable.
*makes 4200
Bills are 4400 for a family of 4
Mortgage renewal in August and will likely increase to over $2000 from $1400
I feel you
Even if that were true, why would you? There are so many other videos out there that are free.
That's not even considering their not insignificant international audience. The price is $6 USD one price worldwide.... To put that in perspective, per MONTH that's 500 indian rupees. Netflix's lowest tier costs.... 199 rupees/month so Watcher is essentially saying they're worth 2.5 times what Indian netflix is worth. A Brazilian fan pointed out the annual fee with discount was over 300 Reais, which was 2+ months of groceries. Like basically they said "If you're not in the US, Canada, EU, UK, Australia, or New Zealand, miss us with that poor shit." Which has been one of the most educational things for me, is international viewers posting how much $6 is in their currency and more importantly HOW MUCH PURCHASING POWER that amount has in their country.
I originally made a mistake in this comment, thanks to @gomboc5146 for pointing it out. I couldn't remember the poster's cost in indian rupees so I used a conversion site and accidentally convert to Indonesian Rupees (IRP) vs Indian Rupees (INR). The above comment has been corrected.
🏴☠️🏴☠️🏴☠️
I kinda could, but I'm already a patreon to several youtubers, and my money only goes so far. And I'd rather pay so that others still have free access, just like I have to other channels I don't financially support, than this exclusive streaming BS. Patreon, YT subscription, Nebula, etc., of all the options available they went for the absolutely stupidest.
I think it's extra baffling and hurtful to realize that like...after all these years with such a dedicated viewership, they actually have no idea what their viewers are like
they are fakes
This is my first time hearing about them, but watching that eat the rich part followed by the shoes(idk if it was satire) was hilariously tone deaf.
The whole video gave me “There are starving children in Africa who can’t ACCESS streaming services, so we’re doing this for YOU and you should be GRATEFUL.”
It’s fine that they want money. Fine, whatever. But shooting your current fandom, who have stuck with you for years and years, directly in the face is a bad move. As if most of us aren’t young folx living through one of the worst cost of living crisis in history, where $6 a month really could make a difference.
I think the sidemen did it best when they launched their paid service. All the content that was on UA-cam stayed on UA-cam and the production value went up because of the paid service. The paid service only had additional content like podcasts, behind the scenes and a few exclusive series that were not on UA-cam before. When you create a paid service for people consuming your free content, it needs to be them paying for additional content, not the same thing they already get for free.
honestly the sidemen did do it the best, from the little i have seen side+ seems like it has great value with all the things they offer
@@oddozone I was subbed for a few months when it first came out, was worth it. Only reason I stopped paying was because I needed to weigh up all the options for monthly payments and cancel some. What I’ve seen from it since then is that it’s gotten even better.
pricing it the same as Dropout really throws into sharp perspective how little value you're getting out of Watcher
The sad thing for me is that there seems to be some crossover in terms of creators on these streaming services. Ify has been on Watcher for a while now but he's also a big part of the Dropout crew, I think he's even hosting some of the game shows on their network. I feel like they should have just tried joining with one of the other creator streaming services, whether Dropout or Nebula. Maybe they were just hoping for a bigger part of the pie...
Bdg also has been on both, albeit only once on Watcher I think
@@michaelberry8096
If they did combine watcher to dropout without changing the price
It may finally push me to pay for it (Already paid for nebula and hesitant to paying more streaming services unless it's actually worth it)
@@michaelberry8096 Big Agree should have just joined Dropout if they wanted to be like them so badly. Their WatcherTV site even has a similar name and same design layout/interface to Dropout
@@michaelberry8096 really? I didnt know that; I'd actually never heard of Watcher before this fiasco. and at this point I doubt I'll ever be a fan, lol
"Eat the rich" can sound nice until you become or want to be "the rich."
that was the goal all along
That’s why saying a three word phrase shouldn’t reward you auto good faith from “anti capitalists” online
I wouldn't be rich. I'd definitely run a non profit though.
i just hope y'all understand that "the rich" are billionaires
like yea, they want money, but i doubt they're looking to make billions
maybe just somewhere above average
@@he4rt5Nah, “The rich” are always just richer than the person doing the eating, it’s not just billionaires, its anyone who owns a business, farm, etc. its basically a pansy pussy way of saying revolution.
I think they also underestimated the fact that people are also sick of the excess of streaming service options out there. Every studio has one and honestly most people want many of them to die or merge so we can go back to just paying for one streaming service.
In capitalism, there is no such thing as "higher costs, higher production quality", theres only "higher costs, more corporate profit"
Most people only really watched them for Shane and Ryan’s series, they could make cuts on certain series that aren’t doing as well as those series. And their audience doesn’t necessarily care about the super high quality content, it already has been so good, it’s the lower budget which makes it enjoyable, not heavily scripted or produced. That’s the fun of it all
Steven needs to go and his boring expensive food vloging show.
Not gonna lie, they could cut _everything_ except for Puppet History and Ghost Files, and I'd be fine. I don't watch anything else of theirs and just don't care lol.
Same
Their best stuff was just them in a room or doing some cheesy low budget outing.
@@ittybittyrampagingcommitteeI like are you scared as well as those two shows , but that’s it! And that’s just them reading scary stories on a zoom call , so they don’t need all this production
Relatability goes a long way. That's what built their fan base. They felt like friends. They've traded that for production value.
I think they wanted to do a DropOut move... But also dropout has so many shows and cast members and it's quality content
Watcher is just the same 3 guys in different shirts and different sets.. yeah the editing is cool but cool enough to pay for?
cannot BELIEVE this was how i found out coffee had a side channel
I laughed when you said it sounded like a Silicone Valley Bro and not a YT creator.
That was Steven Lim talking, the one everyone is blaming for this. He's the CEO, and yes, he laterally has "co-founder" on his Instagram lol
He's always the worst part in their ghost story drinking videos. 😂😂 I really have no idea how he became a CEO, his daddy must be rich.
@boaz08 His daddy IS very rich, he's president of NJIT
He became CEO because Ryan and Shane were like “shit this is hard” and Steven took over as sole CEO. And Steven is very much the “soft launch” using, “founder” listing, Silicon Valley type, but without the coding and tech knowledge.
@@RebeccaBredinRyan and Shane fumbled so badly when they gave up the management
The biggest L
@@RebeccaBredin Just when shane was like "okay Steven, talk about money" that's enough for me to see that the ghoul boys don't know shit about running a company or a big youtube channel and decided to just trust all those things to steven who's obviously Mishandling the funds. Cause it's weird that one of the main blame is being pointed out on the cost of doing ghost files when that is their most successful series that gets BIG sponsorships like we're talking about movie studios and a freaking a TOWN, so ofcourse it's okay to invest in ghost files, but again Steven has also been doing heaps of content that isn't doing as well as ryan and Shane's , and had to take money on videos from ryan and Shane to fund his shows. Fans were quick to notice that they plan on doing a show for Steven where he travels AROUND THE WORLD, to try fancy foods, when again his content isn't doing as well as ryan and Shane, he had the opportunity to have a travel show when no one was asking for it and on the contrary people are asking for ghost files to be set on other countries which is a much better investment but nahh
These guys softly launched a bullet through their foot with this one.
i don’t think they realize that people literally don’t care about production value. buzzfeed unsolved was so popular BECAUSE it was shane and ryan just talking about true crime-because of their personalities. they averaged 10m views on each video, it’s obviously people didn’t care about production quality at ALL. this is such a horrible move, the dislike to like ratio on that video is insane. it has nearly 210k dislikes
it's such a dumb idea too - so much of their audience are broke students, like me, or like.... teenagers. they aren't going to make money from this, not as much as they were with youtube. especially given so many of their viewers are not exactly in favour of corporations like this- watcher was endearing at the start because it was three guys striking out from buzzfeed due to working conditions they were upset by. they presented it as "we are going to be a better company for our audience and our staff." i feel like, like me, a lot of people who liked watcher came from buzzfeed unsolved and admired their whole "from the ground up" thing. watcher is becoming a whole lot less personal and it very much seems like they've lost sight of their audience. it's kind of a shame really, i just hope the staff don't suffer.
It’s weird how I don’t hear ppl talk about (imo) the biggest issue with all this - if a bunch of UA-camrs start charging $5 a month then everyone else will do it too. And before we know it, it’ll cost 100 bucks+ a month to just watch 25 UA-cam channels
That's not gonna happen. The reason why tv/cable has gone down is because of the free amazing content. If everyone starts doing this, then new, amazing creators will start their free channel which people will flock to. Simple supply and demand.
RoosterTeeth was a youtube channel that did this back in the day and it killed a lot of their fanbase. This kind of decision isn't new. But people don't do it because it's dumb as hell.
I'm sorry but that's watching too many UA-cam channels.
this was the issue years ago when it was still (possibly) a not totally insane choice to try and pivot this way. it's crazy that they are trying it NOW, on top of everything else.
@@WECBELTWhy is that too many channels? Not one channel has everything you want, just like television channels.
We have too many streaming services already. Adding in a "one-trick-pony" service just isn't interesting. Also, people overestimate the support they have when the content is free (with ads of course). Why are news services struggling with getting people to pay for the news when it has been free for so long? It's the same issue. Netflix was never free. Hulu has managed to survive somehow, going from free with ads to a low price with ads, but they offer a lot of content. Anyway, killing your brand isn't worth it for the sake of the bottom line.
For me, Hulu is a good deal because of the movies on there. Some absolutely bangers and great movies come and go. It's how I watched the newest starship trooper movies. I've watched all the alien movies. Hulu with ads is a good deal, without a doubt. But I will add in, I also get Spotify with my membership, and I believe that's no longer a thing, so I'm grandfathered in. I believe now it's just for students.
How do they think they are going to attract new subscribers to their niche service, if the only people who know they exist are the people who used to watch their now abandoned UA-cam channel? The only way UA-camrs can make paywalls work is by using their channel to advertise it, which means a lot of their content continues to go on UA-cam. That's why the UA-cam + Patreon + Nebula split is becoming popular.
So many of these suits only care about short term results because it looks better. It's harder to prove things in the long term where a result of you. Which is convenient when their quick answers end up hurting it more down the line and they can pretend it's not their fault.
@@toolittletoolate I’ve talked to C-Suite and it’s because only short-term results go on your Resume
They need to go on a platform like Nebula where you pay once for all channels.
What's more frustrating is that a small percentage of their brain rot fans are going to buy this, and it's going to be enough for them to keep doing it.
Other UA-camrs have created premium paywalled content before -- Nebula is the benchmark for this. If they wanted to expand into other projects, why not sign onto Nebula? (If they asked Nebula and Nebula didn't take them, then their new subscription service isn't worth the $6 /month. Nebula's turned down contracts with less-than-reputable creators before.)
I was thinking this. I occasionally subscribe to Nebula, but there is content from other creators. Similar to a bigger streaming service.
I enjoyed their content but no way in hell i’m paying $6 a month for it. I only watched them casually once in a while and if I paid $6 a month for every channel I watched i’d be broke.
Now if they joined something like Nebula where there’s a decent amount of content then i’d consider it
When I watched their video this morning, I honestly thought it was building up to them announcing that they were moving to Nebula. It would've made a lot more sense.
I love Nebula. It's a little slow to update but it's slowly overcoming the UA-cam as my primary phone stream.
the entire time I was like "just start a patreon like everyone else" and then came the part that said they already had 6000 patrons.
Yeah, I'm a subscriber of theirs and didn't even know they had a Patreon, they should have promoted that more before deciding this was the best way to go.
@@spiderwrist Even raising the price of their Patreon and nothing more would've probably been fine. Sure they would've gotten some complaints, but most people understand that Patreon is extra so most patrons probably wouldn't have minded much because they could always reduce their patronage or unsubscribe.
@@TheVirtualObserver
They have a Patreon tier for $100 per month. How could they go higher?
They have 12 599 patrons atm. Some of them are screwed for having already fully paid the annual plan, especially those who gave away $1200. They for sure didn't predict they will still be charged for a subscription.
We were (well, ARE, still, will be until the end of the year) Patrons. Used to get early access to shows, which was nice, but frankly we just supported them because we wanted to support creators we enjoyed where we could afford to. We were probably their ideal audience.
After watching that video, I’m annoyed that they’re getting the remainder of our yearly Patreon membership. That was the biggest Eff You I’ve ever watched.
They did an update video. They're not taking down the website, but they're changing how it works. Videos one month early on the website then free on UA-cam, and apologized for saying "anyone can afford it"
The problem, fundamentally, is that when Watcher was being run on UA-cam, the viewers didn't have to pay any money to watch it. UA-cam was paying Watcher, not the viewers. Sure, we had to sit through a few ads, but we didn't lose money every time we watched an ad, so it wasn't our money that was paying them. Now it's being run on viewers' money. Now we will actually have to pay them money to watch it, and for only two series I watch on their channel, it's just not worth it.
I think the problem is that everybody immediately thinks "What if all the UA-cam channels I like charge me?"
Do I pay them all? Pay $60 a month for just my favourite ten channels?
This is why pirating is coming back so heavily. For a good few years the convo about it was slim and now with streaming services getting greedier it’s becoming big again. I started using ad blockers on UA-cam because of how bad it finally has gotten. They’ll be fine without my ad view. It’s getting bad everywhere
They’re blathering about high production being necessary and shedding followers, meanwhile Voidzilla is here with just a mic, headphones, one key light, and a black background already growing to a fourth their channel size and trending up. I don’t think these guys really get it.
Imagine working for ten years and finding out that all youre hard work dosent pay well and having to change platforms just to get paid well youtube is dying
@NZ_NATIV3 Don't. They're not starving artists struggling to make ends meet. Not one but a FEW of Watcher's shows are about the CEO flying around/driving in his Tesla to try exorbitant dishes to tell you if they're "worth it." (i.e. Wagyu steak, lobster, gold flake stuff, etc.) They have several sources of income and it's become incredibly apparent that they've mismanaged funds, hired excessive staff, and sorely misread their audience. It is in INCREDIBLY poor taste to ask your audience to foot the bill after all things considered, especially for 60-72$ a year. So don't start with the "they're just trying to make their money" crap.
@@NZ_NATIV3 They were making over $60k a month just from their patreon 😂not including ad revenue from youtube which Moist pointed out would be quite high given their mil view videos. No one has asked them for higher quality content. no one asked them for any of the stuff they were complaining about in their video.
Not an apt comparison. Coffeezilla got a massive following using the high-production stuff
I'd never heard of Voidzilla until I stumbled upon this while watching Watcher gossip videos. I like the way he talks, I subscribed.
You know, that's why UA-cam Premium exists. You pay a monthly subscription (1 USD in my case) and your favourite creators get a cut according to your watch time.
It was Steven. Teaming up with Steven was one of the worst business decisions they’ve ever made. The guy is greedy, has the personality of a dead fish, gets way less views than any of the Shane and Ryan centric videos, and single-handedly destroyed Shane and Ryan’s careers. They need to FIRE Steven, downsize their staff and production quality, and go back to their roots.
Dang, I didn’t realize that this was happening. They should’ve just gone with a UA-cam Membership. It would’ve gone a lot better because people don’t need to swap platforms and it gives people a choice to just have a subscription+ if they choose to.
But GREED
UA-cam takes a big chunk of the revenue for memberships though.
@@CauterizeKingso does Patreon
@@yungtree1082that's why they had their own website
I think UA-cam takes 30% compared to 5-12% patreon
This has to be one of the most disappointing things they've ever done. I thought moving away from Buzzfeed would've been a good thing... boy was I wrong.
Yeah,back then they actually had a spark (comparing to the latest videos)
I love their BuzzFeed videos
Moving away from Buzzfeed was the right thing to do and it paid off big time for these guys. The problem is that they got greedy and bloated, and instead of slowly building up this successful business with what works they've listened to the most idiotic person in the room and decided to gamble it all.
I don't like calling anyone out, we don't know all the details or whose idea this was, but I really do think their CEO is the one to blame for this disaster. He's the one making all the most out-of-touch statements, he's the one who sounds like a Silicon Valley tech bro, he's the one driving a Tesla, he's the one posing in photos on Insta wearing shades in the club and accepting an "influencer award" at an event no one's heard of while wearing an expensive suit, and he's the one who wants to bring back a food show where they travel the world eating obscenely overpriced garbage.
He's so impressively out-of-touch with reality I can only believe that he is the one who has driven this company off a cliff while chasing his own entitlement.
@@ct5625cope more they all thought it was a good idea…if it was really all him there would be pushback on their side which this never would’ve happened, a split, or a breach of contract if one was signed. Like when they left Buzzfeed. Their CEO is just the guy that convinced them their audience would go for it so they can do what they actually want to do, and thus they tried the pitch/sale.
@@ct5625even if it the CEO idea they still went along with it. They are grown adults and not one of them thought this was gonna backfire? I’ve never seen this formula work ever heck rooster teeth tried that and look what happened to them. It doesn’t help that Ryan has been deleting comments peoples critiquing this horrible stupid idea
Imo an example of a youtube channel that did this same thing but really well is Collegehumor's shift to Dropout. But unlike this, there wasn't a Patreon and they promised a lot of new content that wouldnt have worked on UA-cam that they delivered on, and they delivered on that content
Post-Buzzfeed, I really wanted to support Watcher because I thought they could make some really good things. But, honestly, I haven't watched their content in months because despite the improved production quality, most of the shows didn't feel better than even early Unsolved. Their ghost hunting show didn't have the soul that unsolved had. Their true crime/mystery content was not very interesting. Puppet history was the only series I really enjoyed, but that is in no way enough to justify paying for this.
I want them to succeed in general, but this change just doesn't seem justified at this time.
If they had just made their big series for patreon, I think they would have converted free watchers to paid ones on patreon.
That might be part of it. Apology video just dropped
Its smaller cut without patreon. That being said gmm has a streamer in the same price range. Its just the extra content that they put on it while their hits stay on the main
@@1stdragon123 The Mythical Society is a patreon. In the literal sense, it's just reskinned to make it look like it isn't.
they should made Polls on patreon and UA-cam, before make that decision.. my 2cent.
This
That requires respect for their audience, which they dont have.
That seems way too considerate considering what they are trying to do.
Ya, this came so out of the blue it makes your head spin. This is way too massive a business decision to make without any testing of the water or compromise. Other channels I've seen that do similar things still post on UA-cam, the streaming service is just a few months ahead and might have additional "shows", but nothing is lost. Been watching these guys for years, and how the hell did they get so out of touch?
They knew the answer, so they didn't ask. The only surprise is how strong the backlash was vs people grumbling while handing over the cash.
The funny thing about "production value" and UA-cam is that at least a significant chunk of us aren't actually *watching* a lot of the more long form essay/talk based content. We're listening to it while working, driving, doing housework. So like, a good mic matters. But not so much the fancy graphics.
It does look like some of these guys stuff is more classic "tv watching" type shows. But in that case (if UA-cam isn't working out for them) if there's an actual market for them as "tv shows" they'd be better off trying to get onboard with one of the actual streaming services. And if there *isn't* an actual market for them as "tv shows" then they'd probably better find a way to make the UA-cam game work. Or find new jobs.
when I was watching the video and they said they wanted to make television quality content, my genuine reaction was to say "why?" out loud. I understand wanting to grow as creators and creative people but I think there's validity in recognizing what you're good at and what people recognize you for and what's best for the long run.
it's like they decided they want to make black and white silent films -- why dive into obsolete media formats like TV shows? They were part of the new media but didn't want to be.
Bc that’s what they want to do. Simple as that
@@jipvanleyenhorst4834but it’s just crazy. When I was a kid, I had a dream to be an astronaut. I’m an English professor now. I wouldn’t go up to my boss and tell her “this has been fun, but I’d really like to go to space instead. You’ll fund that for me, right?”
Sometimes you end up on a different path than you dreamed when you were a child. I can’t keep my current job AND go to space. It doesn’t make sense, having your cake and eating it too is a nonsensical goal. They didn’t think this through at all
@@birdy7451 you as an English professor should know that’s a completely outlandish comparison to make
I very much enjoy both the high production you were doing and the void. Two sides of the same coin. Keep up the good work coffee
they did update and say the first episode of each season would be free on youtube. All of their current youtube channel content would remain as is. The rest would be behind a paywall. It still didnt do well tho.
I will say I cycle thru pay services each month... like one month hulu, one month disney plus, one month netflix ect. and i keep track of shows and just binge and catch up or pirate it personally.
Loving this Voidzilla concept. A channel that gives you free reign to explore whatever takes your fancy is a great idea. Made me laugh to find out the black background is the result of a file loss rather well thought artistic choice. It's perfect.
The iShowMeat scammers hacked him and are holding the 10mil studio folder hostage. Coffee has to play their newest scam game and beat it in order to get the files back.
Spoiler: It's buggy and will not let you beat the final boss. GOTCHA! GOTCHA!
I enjoy the void too, but I also loved the $10M Studio. And especially the bts on patreon.
This is basically what Coffeezilla was 2 years ago. I still love it.
I miss the suspenders.
I thought it was purely because of petition from fans to make it as Voidzilla.
But a file loss?
Talking about opportunities in times of misery
FFS, with UA-cam Members, Patreon, Nebula, Floatplane, you got TONs of way to get more money and/or add better quality videos without the bad side of UA-cam like demonitisation and limited ToS. That said, none of them can replace UA-cam as the main source to get new people into your content. So they shoot themselves out of that side and make a joke of themselves because damn the Nebula guys really have opportunities to make high-quality series, and it's a whole streaming service made by UA-camrs so you pay a subscription for premium content from them.
Did I just read an ad for Nebula?
@@pavichokchenebula is really good tho
but watcher does not do controversial content in danger of being demonetised or censored.....
@@pavichokche tbh, that's what a lot of the "community" was expecting when they were doing a literal count down to the "big news for the watcher community." That ended up being an extended "f u, pay me."
They thought they were going to announce either:
They were partnering with Nebula (which would put one of their series behind the paywall, Puppet History)
Creating a new "collective" with the Try Guys. Notibly if Watcher and Try Guys, two popular channels with a lot of fan overlap had said they were doing this as a joint venture and it wasn't handled like shit, it probably would have gone over much better. A lot of sentiment in the community is one of price sensitivity, that Watcher doesn't put out enough content a month to justify $6. Maybe $2, but I could easily see that changing if Try Guys were included.
or potentially a merger with Mythical , as they are either friends of R&L or friends of friends and they have done business in the past. Again, this might end up happening now because they tanked all sentiment and goodwill of their company so Mythical coming in as their savior with an investment might be the best they can hope for.
@@pavichokche No. Nebula really is the only company selling what they say. I cannot subscribe to the platform for the same reason I don't subscribe to anything, but after Patreon cut a bunch of supports for content creators, only Nebula remains as "by creators, for creators" financial system. Do I believe it 100%? Not at all, but in a world where we keep choosing lesser evils, god DAMN Nebula must be the only way out for high quality content...
What a world we live in...
when you hear: help us make it a better place for everyone " you should run
Back then, there were a very popular group of content creators, hiding behind of meme of a glitch known as "rocket jump", later they moved on and reassembled under "Corridor Crew" banner…
One day they moved under YT premium…
And disappeared from the general audience's sight…
bro the internet is just becoming cable again. how many subscription model services do we really need at this point. I miss the hell out of one-time purchases.
fr the subscription model is insane 😭
In regards to the weird language they used as well, Steven Lim the guy who said that (as much as I loved the shows he used to make) I've noticed has this approach, and i wouldn't be surprised if this was his idea. He was always so obsessed with views, getting in with the elite (i.e. showing off his best mate Simu Liu as much as possible) being the best CEO and all that silicon valley stuff. So not at all surprised.
Agree. Kinda sad. I dont think they're gonna recover from this even if they retract what they said lmao
I was JUST thinking about that. This feels like a straight up Steven decision that he talked the others into. But I disagree that it's a status thing as much as it's a "bigger and better" thing where he feels stifled by the limited budget they have to work with currently. He's always been on about wanting to make the next season of [insert show] bigger and higher quality and has consistently had to tone it down due to budget constraints. But I think this was the completely wrong way to try and remedy that and I wish he had more pushback from the other team members at the studio.
Agreed. He's the trust fund baby who is the most out of touch with the human experience.
He's Definitely a tech Bro. He has a Tesla after all.. bet he talks about crypto too much
I never liked him. Always gave me the creeps. The vibe was not it.
He really does come off as an out of touch tech bro😕 there’s been some like weird and off putting things in the past that have shown up in videos but nothing overly crazy but it wouldn’t surprise me if he’s the one that really pushed this instead of looking at other (probably more viable) options.
Great video Coffee, the sound balancing was a bit off as you seemed to be very quiet and then I nearly blew the house down with the clip you shown. Hope this helps at all and keep up the good work on reporting.
I think a more viable way to do this would have been for them to say “we’re going to paywall every second video in order to increase out revenue while still providing content to our audience members who cannot afford paywalled content.”. Or they could do a third of their content.
I was a bit stunned when I saw that video yesterday. My first thought was "It's a little late to be making an april fool's joke" and then the pin dropped that they were being serious. I like their content for Mystery Files and Puppet History, and I do understand the need to keep revenue flowing but this...was one of the most alienating experiences I've had online since the Fine Bros fiasco, and I'm not even subscribed to them.
I think they may have forgotten that a huge portion of youtube watchers and especially their followers are more than likely kids and college age students who either need that six dollars to eat or get medicine, or are kids and don't have cash flow to drop on a youtube channel turned streaming service. I firmly believe that if they rework their website this could actually work.
They have/had twelve thousand patrons, that was their opportunity right there. Patreon takes a percentage of the cash made by whoever uses their website, so instead of paywalling their content from both patreons and youtube viewers, their streaming service should BE the new patreon. Encourage their patreon members to shift their support to a website where all the revenue made goes into paychecks and production value. Film in a way where that streaming site gets the new seasons first, and then like a month after it's been up with exclusive access, drip the new seasons onto youtube for additional ad revenue while the next season is being premiered on their streaming site.
I feel like this would've been an easier pitch to work with. The patreon members now know that every cent is going to the creators they like, and the rest of the broke and underage world gets good content from users they are fans of. This move just doesn't make sense no matter how I turn it about in my head, and I do hope they rethink how to approach this because it's not going well and I DO want them to succeed.
Edit: Watcher released an update video that took some of my suggestions on board. I have no doubt that others were echoing the same thoughts I had, but it's a relief to see that they reconsidered their choice. I hope they find that middle ground that lets them properly fund their creativity and share it with the world.
Respectfully, they actually have around 12000 patrons, and with a minimum payment tier of $5 a month. Which only strengthens your point lol
@@peytonalexander5300 Understood, and I agree. If they have that many patreon members, then it could definitely work to encourage them to shift their support there. Hell, toss in videos that would have to be heavily censored by youtube and make them stream exclusives. Though, probably most importantly, make a community poll expressing this idea for a streaming site and see what the community actually wants. Gauge your audience before you drop a massive bomb out of nowhere on them. Not many people handle this kind abrupt and massive change well, as shown by the reaction on the PR nightmare that is their last video.
@@peytonalexander5300Do they? I'm not subscribed but most Patreon trackers are saying they have about 5,700 rn down from a high of 6,500ish.
Either way you're right that it strengthens the point, and seeing how big of a dip they've taken is... Cathartic. Maybe once they start losing money hand over fist they'll pull their heads out of their assholes and realise how big a mistake they've made.
Money is not the issue, it never was. If it was, Lim wouldn't have been paying thousands to fly private. Mari (Ryan's wife) couldn't afford to stay unemployed while getting showered with luxury gifts (that big ass gucci bag really stuck with me sorry lmao). They've been wildly mismanaging their finances for personal consumption while blaming the business for it, even though the Patreon donors alone earns them roughly a 100k per month. They have a shit ton of sponsorships not only from brands but from a whole ass state itself (Montana). Their merch are almost always sold out, and most of their videos have millions of views that pulls in a large sum of money as well. Hell that stupid leaving UA-cam video alone had FIVE ad breaks, ironic considering they pointed out in that same video how they don't wanna rely on ads for their earnings🤡
Adding another app into the mix is probably more of an issue than ppl realize. Joe Rogan only moved to Spotify and barely maintained 60% of his subscribers from YT.
Maybe age plays a role, but there are some streamers I watch who have started signing deals with other platforms, and they usually have to do a certain number of streams that are exclusive to one platform. Personally, I am okay with just missing those episodes. I'm not gonna sign up for Twitch or Rumble, just to potentially watch a few xtra streams per month.
As far as the money goes, I can do $6 a month and I think most people can. The problem is, I have no interest in adding another autopay-monthly subscription into the mix. I have an Cct that I use almost exclusively for my online subscriptions and purchases and I don't keep great track of it.
Normally, I'll make sure there's a minimum of $40 in it, but I know I'll forget about a $6 monthly charge because I know I won't go to their new platform that often. I'll forget the icon is even on the Home screen and eventually, I'll eat a $35 overdraft because I got charged $6 a week after my UA-cam, Hulu and Netflix subscriptions all processed.
Not to mention, I was really only watching the "Are You Scared" or True Crime videos, which they weren't super consistent about putting out. Sometimes I'd get 2 months of notifications before there was a vid I had any interest in watching.
these guys feel like a good candidate for Nebula
homestar runner did this exact thing as an april fools joke back in 2005
The funniest thing is if T.V. is what they are aiming for, T.V. is a free ad supported model. UA-cam is modern T.V., Netflix is modern cable/cinema.
The thing with Watcher being a streaming service is that, while they have higher quality production this is like high quality for A UA-cam channel. Not high quality for like more mainstream HBO or Netflix or Disney show of smiliar nature. Which is why, this looks ludicrus. also, they're, like you've noted taking away something that used to be for free and putting it behind paywall, and they were already doing good money. From Patreon and ad-sense and sponorships and also merch. Because they're making pretty pricey merch too. So they have a LOT of sources of income here. Charlie pointed it out too in his video.
(I love your pfp 🤩)
Watcher: "So long UA-cam peasants."
UA-cam: *Watches them sink* ... "Bye."
Steven saying everyone can afford 5.99 a month was ridiculous.
"Eat the rich.. check out my overpriced shoes made by child labor!" Pretty sure they don't believe in any of the nonsense they're spouting, they just say it to please their audience.
No guys like really this mansion isn't nearly as big as a billionaires house. They are the real problem.
The one known for having that "eat the rich, piracy is good, you can steal a little as a treat" attitude is Shane. The one who made the shoes comment is Ryan. People are most surprised about Shane going along with this for a reason, the other 2 are less surprising.
Well as Steven (CEO of Watcher) is very clearly not good for video ideas and is just business minded.
I have a feeling he is the silicon valley 'bro' with this utterly terrible idea.
Hope he leaves Watcher and they continue business with someone else as CEO.
Bro created content for a living and suddenly think he's a smart businessman on top of Silicon Valley XD
I've loved Stevens shows but I said the same thing. I wouldn't be surprised if this was his idea to begin with
He's a dumb businessman because you aren't supposed to make it more difficult for current and, more importantly, potential customers from knowing about and accessing your product. You are supposed to try make it easier.
@@vanessac1721 these former buzzfeed people benefit massively from their eco system( a million subs outta the gate). When they make it out they think they "know something".
Buzzfeed had 100 times the total views of any one show but they never pay-walled properly cus it would drive people off.
Cus the views are worth more than competing with netflix and amazon prime or disney+// both of which you can get bundled with other services.
They could have gotten more sponsors as well.
Wouldn’t say business minded. He’s like Mr. Krabs and not some logistical genius
Steven’s post was the finishing blow for many loyal Watcher fans 💀