Like many others in these awful times, the people behind the legendary Mega64 YouTube and Twitch channels saw their revenue drop drastically in the last month. They only have enough to keep both the cool RGB lights and even the regular ones on for a couple of weeks.
Yesterday, in a Twitch stream that proved spooky for the wrong reasons, Mega64 revealed a bunch of serious unexpected hurdles that the group is dealing with.
What happened to Mega64?
Declining ad revenue – The Internet hasn’t been kind on content creators lately, and Mega64 has been having it unfairly rough. Though their content retains the same level of quality, YouTube just isn’t as lucrative as it once was.
Merchandise Problems – While the group takes the blame for taking longer than it should to deliver some of its merchandise, merch also saw an unrelated decrease in sales and profitability due to inflated production costs.
Bad Faith actors – The group has sadly fallen prey to a yet-unknown scammer or party of scammers which has stolen thousands of dollars in donation money and also prevented the group from getting further donations on their regular donation channels.
What is Mega64?
Mega64 began as an innocent project by friends Rocco Botte, Derrick Acosta, and Shawn Chatfield that turned into one of the most beloved gaming-related channels on YouTube.
I was already an adult when I was first exposed to Mega64’s content, but I’d be lying if I were to ignore the group’s influence over my work and overall desire to make video game-related content.
Among many other things, Mega64’s YouTube channel is a trailblazer of video-game-related parodies. One problem with Internet comedy is that it tends to grow old fast. We all know that. I re-watched some of my favorite Mega64 videos of the past to avoid getting dunked on for my possibly outdated humor, and can gladly say they absolutely hold up.
The first Mega64 video I ever saw, VG Fact Checkerz, is a staple of Internet comedy. It does a great job of spoofing answers to ridiculous questions not even the highest-level Redditors were asking back then, and features a contender for the best ending for a YouTube video ever:
Mega64 is also unique in that it somehow managed to get actual video game personalities to go along with their hilarious spoofs. Below you can find Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi himself spoofing his own history at Squaresoft just because he gets it.
They even got Hideki Kamiya, one of gaming’s most volatile personalities, to poke fun at his own infamous need to block anyone who so much as says anything he doesn’t vibe with on Twitter.
The holy grail, to me, at least, is possibly their Death Stranding spoof. There’s a twist where we learn it was at least partially filmed by Hideo Kojima himself, who then got fired by the Mega64 crew for his poor workmanship.
If you’re not familiar with Mega64 — a possibility, considering the unbelievable reality of how one of the best things on YouTube for over 20 years has never managed to break one million followers — You might think I’m trolling you, but it’s real. It’s all real:
Right now, joining the Mega64 Patreon is the best way to directly contribute to the channel. You can also help via Ko-Fi donation. Sharing your favorite Mega64 videos on Twitter will surely remind at least a few people of some of the best moments they’ve had on the Internet, and that’s already something.
This past year in the gaming industry has been riddled with disheartening closures of great studios and layoffs of professionals we dearly miss — many even on a personal level. Mega64 is giving us the rare chance of actually preventing something good from disappearing, so consider doing with that information the coolest thing you can think of.
