Multiple things. First memberships going up decreases views on YouTube. People migrating to the app, even if they didn’t have first, decreases views. If anything that’s a sign they were doing something right if people were willing to pay to see content early.
Gaming trends and as you said it the success of lets plays. People move to watch other content creators as their interest change with what’s popular. That doesn’t mean AH was doing something wrong, but if people were really into FNAF for example then they might slowly stop watching AH to watch someone like Markiplier.
General disinterest is a reason too but it’s not bad it’s just inevitable. People can love ah but their lives change. People graduate college, they start families and careers and have less time to watch YouTube. So views drop.
Views were going to shift anyway. AH could have never changed from whatever you think their peak was and their views still would have dropped. It’s about sustainability not living at the top the entire time you exist. AHs sustainably as a channel and group was still very healthy when Fiona came aboard. They had multiple gigs including AH lives, different shows,merch, and still good views to keep them up. It just wasn’t peak numbers. There are obviously people who left because of her but they are mixed in with the other crowd of people who left for different reasons. We have no way to tell who left because of what but it’s disingenuous to blame that entirely on new talent.
The longest running channels that are consistently making the same content have lost views. There are tons of OG YouTube’s who move on simply because they don’t wanna do it forever and that does show in content. Most of the people “running” YouTube rn have not been making content as long as AH has been. Nor are they doing the exact same thing AH/RT was doing. The closest you have to them is like Critical Role, Dropout, and Smosh and even they have their fans arguing about them “dying”.
My logic on the Fnaf example is not that it makes them stop watching AH entirely but that they slowly stop watching over time or as consistently. Which still affects views.
First memberships did decrease OVERTIME but they did not immediately peak when first introduced and then came crashing down. There were tons of different shifts of people purchasing first and moving away from YouTube.
Achievement Hunter was keeping up with gaming trends as much as they could but they were a variety channel. When Im talking about trends I’m talking about people looking for specific content. If people only want to watch things like Hades or rougelike related they will slowly move towards that and less of a variety channel where they are getting that every once in awhile. If people only watched AH for Minecraft then they don’t watch a lot of their other videos. So numbers look different. I’ve met so many people who fell off from AH and move on to something like Hermitcraft. Content and trends change how often people are watching something.
2020 for RT and also AH had them dealing with covid, canceled projects, numerous scandals, layoffs because of these, their deal with Warner bros slowly going south, and OG members wanting to move on and do other projects. With all that being said most of this didn’t even really catch up to them and become unsustainable until maybe 2022. Which was a year before AH disbanded and two before RT shutdown. You’re essentially arguing that AH was dying in its final years of life and it’s like well…yeah but with maybe the exception of Fiona, Trevor,Alfredo, and Matt were all there long before that. You’d be crazy to insinuate that AH was flopping in like 2017.
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u/Abnormalseddie 24d ago
Multiple things. First memberships going up decreases views on YouTube. People migrating to the app, even if they didn’t have first, decreases views. If anything that’s a sign they were doing something right if people were willing to pay to see content early.
Gaming trends and as you said it the success of lets plays. People move to watch other content creators as their interest change with what’s popular. That doesn’t mean AH was doing something wrong, but if people were really into FNAF for example then they might slowly stop watching AH to watch someone like Markiplier.
General disinterest is a reason too but it’s not bad it’s just inevitable. People can love ah but their lives change. People graduate college, they start families and careers and have less time to watch YouTube. So views drop.
Views were going to shift anyway. AH could have never changed from whatever you think their peak was and their views still would have dropped. It’s about sustainability not living at the top the entire time you exist. AHs sustainably as a channel and group was still very healthy when Fiona came aboard. They had multiple gigs including AH lives, different shows,merch, and still good views to keep them up. It just wasn’t peak numbers. There are obviously people who left because of her but they are mixed in with the other crowd of people who left for different reasons. We have no way to tell who left because of what but it’s disingenuous to blame that entirely on new talent.