Oops! My YouTube Channel might be gone for good

If you were the kind of person to keep up with GameLuv on even a semi-regular basis, you might have noticed some disgusting gray YouTube thumbnails popping up across the site. Unfortunately, my YouTube account which I’ve had since 2006 has been terminated and it took nearly 2,000 videos down with it. How’d it happen? I’m still hopeful it’s a case of mistaken identity.

Last year my separate Delisted Games YouTube channel got hit with an infringement claim and was terminated. I then created a new, also separate account linked to my main YouTube channel to start rebuilding. After some time the sub-channel was logged out of my main account. I assume it was for security reasons because I hadn’t switched over to it for a few months and when I went to reconnect it a few weeks ago it must’ve tipped off the YouTube algorithm.

Possibly because both channels were named “Delisted Games”, the bot mismatched my totally-legit and still-active Delisted channel with the one that was banished in 2017. That kind of behavior is apparently a no-no in the YouTube EULA and so it dragged my main account down with it. That was a frantic and frightening thing to discover on a random Wednesday evening.

It’s been nearly a week since I sent YouTube my carefully measured appeal and I’m hoping the channel will be reinstated sometime soon. If not, the appeals will continue. If that still doesn’t work, well, I’ve got a lot of re-uploading to do… somewhere. DTube maybe? Until this shakes out please forgiven the gross gray thumbnails littering the site, and if you’d like to help me rebuild, follow along on the new Delisted channel. Even if I get my original channel back I’ll be actively using that one from now on for delisted work. I think a little decentralization is in order so 100% of my efforts aren’t totally lost again.