Pedro Pina onstage with Evan Shapīro (Photo by Eamonn M. McCormack/
Each week, we handpick a selection of stories to give you a snapshot of trends, updates, business moves, and more from around the creator industry.
This week, a Twitch streamer beats a chess champ, Minecraft developer Mojang challenges Roblox and Fortnite, YouTube is doing…a lot, and a couple creative wizards roll out a robo racoon.
Creator commotion
How would you celebrate beating one of the world’s best chess players?Bulgarian Twitch streamer Witty Alien got one over on grandmaster Magnus Carlsen and celebrated by stripping his pants off on stream. Believe it or not, this isn’t Carlsen’s first incident with pants: In 2024, he withdrew from the World Chess Championship after being penalized for wearing jeans.
Chris Olsen wants his memoir to help people feel “less alone.” The TikToker said writing his new book, I Think My Therapist Hates Me, “felt like I was just kind of like stabbing myself over and over again.” But for him, the pain was worth it. “It’s a lot about young people who have maybe struggled with their own substance abuse issues or they’ve been in families where addiction was a big issue and getting through, that they felt very alone,” he told Variety. “[A]nd I think that is the point of writing a story like that, writing a memoir, feeling less alone and relating to people and that’s really all I wanted.”
VTubers in Manhattan.New Yorkers heading through Times Square this week might see a 20-foot-tall anime girl. Tokyo-based VTuber agency hololive is running a massive ad campaign in major cities around the world to push hololive Dreams, its first video game. The rhythm title promises 150+ original songs with appearances by more than 50 hololive VTubers–but so far, player feedback is mixed.
Platform headlines
Minecraftdeveloper Mojang is hiring for the creator economy. Fresh job listings call out UGC leaders Roblox and Fortnite as direct competitors, and Mojang is clearly hoping to keep up in the creator space. It’s opened roles for a Director of Creator Programs and Ecosystem Marketing, Principal and Senior Program Managers in its partner developer relations team, and a Senior Director of Creator Monetization. Very interesting indeed…
One, two, three.We have a YouTube triplet this week:
- It says it’s now deprioritizing channels “identified as primarily aggregating or re-uploading other creators’ videos without significant changes” in the Shorts algorithm. We’ll have to see how this policy plays out when live, but from the description, it seems the burgeoning clipping industry (where some creators pay millions to mobilize armies of accounts that clip and repost content from their streams and long-form videos) will take a big hit.
- YouTube is also (reportedly) shopping for more sports rights–but only if they come in a package deal.
- Horror hits Obsession and Backrooms got talk-up from Pedro Pina, YouTube’s Vice President for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. “You see, from a cinema standpoint, a huge impact,” he said at an event in Madrid. “[T]hey were tremendously successful this year and I would expect to see more and more of these examples in the Emmys and Oscars in the next years.”
Instagram is doing a pay-to-play version of Twitch’s front page. It’s rolling out Boosts, which promote a creator’s broadcast while they’re live. Boosted streams show up in the main Instagram feed along with Stories and Reels, (ideally) giving creators a better chance of finding more viewers as they’re streaming. Basically, it’s Twitch’s front page, except you gotta fork over some cash to be there.
Exits and entrances
Two more out at Good Good. The creator golf company has lost another couple execs: Logan Spence, its Head of Content, and Hung Tran, Head of Events. Their exits follow those of CEO Matt Kendrick and President Joe Flannery, both of whom left after Good Good’s disastrous Callaway driver ad. The ad stripped Good Good of major partnerships with the PGA Tour, the Golf Channel, and Callaway itself, and Good Good is now on the long, slow climb to get back in everyone’s good graces.
Paramount’s streaming chief is out ahead of Warner Bros. merger. The two entertainment giants are officially set to become Skydance early next week, and staff restructures are already happening. Cindy Holland, who joined Paramount as streaming chief in 2025, is out; Max Bloys, Chairman and CEO of HBO and HBO Max Content, has been tapped to run all streaming efforts for the combined conglomerate.
Motion brings in a former Spotify, Meta, and Fullscreen exec.Chanel Simmons joins the creator content distribution company as its Managing Director of U.S., where she’ll work on a proprietary system that audience-tests content for best cut-through. Motion Society says it sends out 30,000 videos across platforms each month for creators like Jesser, Stephen Sharer, and Lizzy Capri.
The internet is a strange place
MrBeast’s Shark Tank spot is now yours for the watching. In or out? Jimmy Beast (and Jeffrey Housenhold, CEO of his company Beast Industries) joined long-running pitch show Shark Tank as a guest investor on Season 18’s premiere episode. The ep aired Sept. 30 and went live on Hulu the next day–but for those of you not handing Disney your money, the oft-updated Shark Tank YouTube channel has you covered. A select pitch from the Beastified tank is up here.
Sleep slop.AI “content creators” have a new target audience: unconscious people. ‘Videos to sleep to’ is a growing niche, populated largely by ASMR, soundscapes, white noise and aural tones, and low-keyLet’s Plays. Uploads are often hours long, and since the goal is getting people to snooze, there’s a good chance their devices will end up playing through the whole video, whether they’re actually watching or not. Of course, get-rich-quick cash-grabbers see this as a business opportunity, and they’ve been very busy getting ElevenLabs to pump out sleep slop.
Robo raccoon. Animatronic enthusiast YouTubers Wicked Makers have opened the cage door for CH1PP13, a built-from-scratch robotic racoon that will roam Pittsburgh haunted house Hundred Acres Manor. The duo custom-made CH1PP13 and outfitted him with a few spooky special effects for any guests brave enough to interact with him. Maybe get your vaxes updated before you step through the gates…
Musk is big mad. Predictably, the tech oligarch does not like the new four-hour documentary from a filmmaker who categorizes him as a “bullshitter” whose main “genius” business function is pumping stock. And big tech appeared to rally behind him, with YouTube and Meta initially refusing to run ads for the docu. Both reversed course after news coverage, however, and both blamed the original ad-block on automatic systems and supposed errors. Hmm.
Minecraft‘s very own Hannah Montana. Mike Tomlin spent 12 years as the Pittsburgh Steelers’ head coach But during his downtime, he had another goalpost to reach: building one of Minecraft‘s most detailed cities.
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