In the midst of midterm week and trying to get the next RiverCityGamers podcast together (coming this Friday, hopefully), the video-hosting service Blip, which hosts videos for every member of RiverCityGamers, started cutting back on the bulk of its userbase. Specifically, they cut back on people who, in their eyes, weren't contributing a "high-quality original web series." As far as I know, the list of RCG members affected is as follows:
Zeromaster
Blondeguygamer
ShadowSnake123
AngelHalo (who I feel especially bad for, considering he's also had his original YouTube account wrongfully suspended)
WellUnreal007
Nightman39
I haven't heard from Onirokaku or Wizwar100 on the status of their accounts, though you might be asking why my name isn't listed.
Well, Blip e-mailed everyone on their site, whether their accounts were getting removed or not. Here is the e-mail I received:
Dear Blip Producer,
The following message is regarding the Blip account SCXCR.
You may have heard that we’ve been telling some legacy producers that we're going to close their accounts in an effort to keep Blip focused on high quality shows. To avoid confusion, we wanted to reach out and preemptively head off any misconceptions or concerns you might have.
If you did not receive an email asking you to move your content, you will not be affected by this effort. If
you are producing a high quality original web series, you have nothing
to worry about. On the contrary, expect to get more love than ever from
us!
Once
again, we also want to reassure you that the core Blip toolset
(producer dashboard, video player and monetization tools) will remain
the same; Blip.com
will continue to operate as a robust entertainment destination; and the
industry-leading Blip sales team will be ramping up their efforts.
If you have any questions or concerns, please visit Producer Support at http://support.blip.tv or contact us with specific questions.
Thanks,
Blip Support
I've spent the past couple days wondering how and why my account isn't on the chopping block (yet). I haven't uploaded anything to Blip since July (the Lifeline video) and I purposely made my show homepage look like utter garbage, partially to drive away dirty casuals and partially to stand out from the over-professionalized personification of stagnation that usually clutters the front page of the site. However, now I'm stuck asking myself this:
Should I close my Blip account?
This account is something I specifically created to host my more well-produced (by my standards anyway) videos, as well as the Soulja Boy mixes when they got copyright flagged to hell and back. I specifically refused to monetize any of my YouTube videos because of my disgust at some of their practices, but with Blip ads were part of how they did things so I put up with it. I've seen exactly one payout in the four years the account has been up (which I promptly used all $25 of to buy Persona 4) and am probably four years from another, so I haven't gained much nor stand to lose much from leaving. That and I'm particularly pissed off about my friends' show pages getting the boot. For some reason though I feel... I don't know, attached to it? The point when I got the Blip account is the point where I really started putting in the effort to try and make my videos the best quality I possibly could, and I've put a fair share of time into both the videos and that account to make it happen.
I just...
I don't know. Thoughts?
