News: Game Grumps Leave Polaris
Game Grumps, a major YouTube group who produces ‘Let’s Play’ content for their fans, has parted ways from Polaris. Polaris is a company that focuses on working with various YouTube channels and assists with promotion, connections, and working with YouTube if there are any problem for a cut of what ever the channels under their umbrella makes. Other major YouTubers such as Total Biscuit, Jesse Cox, Dodger, and many others work with Polaris and have been vocal about their relationship with the group in mostly positive ways as they have helped their channel grow and assisted in getting them into conventions but in a recent turn of events it seems a few things have changed for the worse which may have caused the Grumps to leave once their contract is finished.
Today Game Grumps member Suzy, wife of Game Grumps co founder, Arin, went about her regular promotion of a series she runs called ‘Table Flip‘ on twitter. She received various comments on how much they disliked ‘Sling‘, which is a service Polaris has employed to charge users a monthly fee in exchange for getting to view content created by the YouTubers under them early or sometimes at all. Sling is currently only available in the US which leaves international Game Grumps fans out of luck with getting to see some of their content early.
Intrigued by this, I investigated further in the official Game Grumps Subreddit where fans give their comments and complaints on their favorite Grumps, when I happened upon this thread. Other fans noticed Suzy’s information and discussed a strange occurrence on the Polaris website where all of the content creators they are partnered with are listed. Game Grumps, whose episodes of Table Flip are so popular were featured i the promotional image of the home page but have been removed from the ‘Shows‘ section and the ‘Talent‘ section of their website adding further evidence to the end of their partnership.
Fans of the Grumps added their opinions and speculation to the thread but admitted that this was just that: Nothing but speculation until someone could confirm.
Sure enough, confirmation did come.
User blimey4 commented with a simple “Confirmed” which led to a series of questions by fellow fans on the accuracy of his statement until the identity of blimey4 was revealed.
It seems with this confirmation, Game Grumps and Polaris have indeed split ways after the final episodes of Table Flip are finished. What remains unknown is why they ended their relationship. Surely fans, myself included, disliked the content restriction to a paid service that was only available in the US until it is later released on their regular YouTube channel months later. If the notion that Polaris did in fact force content creators to private some of their videos is true, then that too is disturbing. Again, we won’t really know why the Grumps split from Polaris and may never will in order to keep everything professional.
I know a common compliant about Game Grumps is that their communication with fans isn’t always the best and this may be because of personal reasons or contractual obligations but honestly, how they run their business is completely up to them. From the viewpoint of a fan, I enjoyed their Table Flip series, I did get annoyed by the shift in content restriction but hearing Arin and Suzy complain about Sling and Polaris on various episodes of Game Grumps made me feel at ease due to the fact they were aware of how things were and did lie about their feelings to fans. I fully believe Game Grumps keeps their fans in mind when making a majority of decisions and if they were the ones to move forward with leaving Polaris then I give them all of the praise.
I took screenshots of a majority of sources I found just in case threads/tweets/images were removed. Hopefully this article does not hurt Game Grumps in any way, I wanted to inform fellow Grump fans on this news.
Chicano | Fighting/Writing for Diversity | DM since 08 | Anime Lover | Site: https://www.thegeeklyfe.com | info@thegeeklyfe.com | http://twitch.tv/that_deangelo | https://linktr.ee/deangelomurillo
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