What Beast Games Means for The Future of YouTube

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 The game show made by MrBeast in collaboration with Prime Video is breaking records left and right, becoming the most-viewed show on the platform in over 82 countries. Insane numbers, especially for a YouTuber. I mean, it wasn’t even considered a “job” until 7 or 8 years ago. It’s a great achievement for MrBeast and other YouTubers as well; they are taken a lot more seri
ously by the whole world now, and a large portion of that credit does go to MrBeast.

Jimmy Donaldson has also pioneered what we call “production-heavy videos” in the modern era of YouTube. His budgets have exceeded a million dollars per video several times now, which is great, but it does take away from what YouTube was made for in the first place: bridging the gap between audiences and creators, one that is a chasm in Hollywood.

Let’s rewind a bit. MrBeast built this empire on YouTube with ideas like spending 24 hours on top of a mountain or buried alive. It was content that felt fresh (ironically), personal, and a little crazy. But as his projects grew in scale—multi-million-dollar budgets, MCU-level editing, and Hollywood-level stunts—it started setting a new bar on the platform. Now, content creators feel like they have to do the same thing. They have to take up large scale videos, otherwise they will fall to every creator’s worst nightmare: fading into irrelevance.

Add these huge, scripted videos into the pot that is YouTube, mix some subscription service into it, and you have… Netflix all over again?

What made YouTube different from other things in the first place? It wasn’t polished. It wasn’t perfect. It was a place where a person could connect with their viewers. Where viewers could feel that, yeah, this screen is the only thing keeping me from grabbing out and touching them. 

Even MrBeast himself is shifting. The guy who once did crazy yet extremely entertaining videos for fun now feels more like a machine churning out content to chase records. Sure, the video is entertaining, but it’s hard to not notice that the genuine, personal feeling that drew people to his channel in the first place is taking a backseat. And this isn’t just a “MrBeast problem.” It is a platform-wide issue. Success on the platform is increasingly defined by how much money you can pour into your videos, not how funny you are or how creatively you can play Minecraft.

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