I've read the transcript from the video and from what I can tell they're making their new service what their patreon was. That seems like the best move they could have done in this situation: they'll be making all the money from patreon and not have to take the losses of what setting up the channel would have taken in the first place as I would imagine there's some sort of cost to it.

I can't imagine it's going to sit 100% well with them though given they've read the comments and 10000% read all the awful things people were saying towards Steven. He deserved better. You just watch those people come crawling back now.

I've just been looking at the comments on YouTube and I've been seeing several videos on tiktok and the amount of people blaming Steven for everything as if it's not a group decision is ridiculous. The way people think one man in a group's company can just say yeah we're doing this now and that's final instead of having several meetings about it, everyone discussing pros and cons and all that, going through timeliness of when to set things up... that's not just one man guys. Ryan and Shane definitely have more of a say in their own company than they're trying to imply. More than anything right now I feel really bad for Steven, this is clearly something they're ALL excited about and the comments is nothing but oh well we're all here for Shane and Ryan so Steven you don't need to make your expensive food shows and drive your tesla xoxox. That to me feels more tasteless than the whole reveal.

That being said...

I do agree with how people are saying the timing and presentation is a little tasteless. We're literally in a recession right now. People are broke. The points people make about not giving money to big corporations like Netflix and Aprime and just give it to the smaller creators are missing the point. People don't want to pay for content that was previously free regardless of who's making it, end of story. Especially given the nature of 'just pirate Netflix' and all that vibe they give off, they can't expect the audience they've built with that mindset to be chill about yet another subscription to add to the pile. (Though people saying eat the rich are hilarious to me as if these three men combined have even 1% of Bezos' wealth come on now folks)

I've been on their patreon since literally day one and I'm not going to lie earlier this month before all this was even announced I cancelled my subscription purely cos I can't afford to keep supporting them at the moment given I'm barely affording to live as it is and my workplace decided to screw us over completely (people in the UK look up GAME and what frasers are doing to us managers it's soooooooo funny :))))))) ) so to now find out all but the first ep of each series they put out is going to be behind a paywall just felt like a massive kick in the teeth.

I want to support them and HAVE supported them with money from my own wallet but can't afford that anymore so how are they expecting people who weren't willing/unable to pay before all this to suddenly start paying now?