SFS (Silly Filly Studios), the creators behind giant pony projects including Snowdrop and Fall of the Crystal Empire have announced a hold on major animations projects going forward. If any of you have been following the Youtube drama of the last year, you've probably heard of a host of issues with the platform that are starting to plague creators.
Lets dive into it below!
In the case of SFS, two major points are made in the video. The elusive Youtube algorithm that drives everyone nuts with it's seeming randomess has stopped favoring them in recommended videos. If you are a Youtuber, not popping up as recommended can really kill the viewcounts. There are a million theories on why this is, and many have resorted to begging for "likes" and clickbaity thumbnails to rise up. Unfortunately, not even that is 100% foolproof, as the platform tends to pick some over others regardless, usually favoring channels that release quick and dirty content as opposed to giant, heavily edited projects. Again though, this is still all a mystery.
The actual format of the service has also started killing view counts from traditional subscriptions, as the main page no longer defaults to subs, instead favoring recently viewed or recommended. You either need to manually click over to subscriptions, or opt in for email updates (also not default). Oddly enough, and regardless of what you think of him, Pewdiepie did a pretty good job of explaining that issue earlier this month, as even someone making millions off the platform sees substantial cuts in viewership from the way the website is run now.
Hopefully with enough complaining someone over at the Google HQ will kick the Youtube gerbil back onto the right path. For now though, we will probably continue to see content creators cry out like this until something changes.
Anyway, get the case for Silly Filly Studios in their video below!
