"We are losing all the YouTube greats this year": Fans respond as YouTube legend MatPat announces reasons for retirement

Matthew Patrick Robert, better known by his YouTube alias MatPat, bid his community a tearful goodbye today after announcing that he will retire from content creation in a few months. In a video titled Goodbye Internet, uploaded on his The Game Theorists channel, Matthew revealed that his 13-year-long YouTube journey will come to an end on March 9 with a final video. After this, he will be handing over control of his channel to someone else.

Fans were naturally taken aback by the announcement, with one commenter noting that a lot of "YouTube greats" have been retiring since 2024 started:

"We are losing all the YouTube greats this year. Thank you, Matpat, for all the years of entertainment!"

YouTube comments about the retirement (Image via The Game Theorists/YouTube)

Amongst the various reasons MatPat has given for retiring from The Game Theorists, the biggest one seems to be that he needs to spend time with his family, having grown older. The YouTuber also noted that he is leaving his legacy in the good hands of fellow creators such as Amy, Lee, and Santi, who will continue pumping out content while he takes a backseat.

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"Wanted to go out on a high note": MatPat explains why he is retiring from YouTube in an emotional video

MatPat opened the emotional video by stating:

"It's not clickbait. On March 9 I will be hosting my last theory episode ever. At which point I will be handing off my channels to someone else."

After discussing how the The Game Theorists channel was his first child, the iconic YouTuber addressed his community. Shedding a tear, MatPat told viewers how much he would miss them:

"This has been a literal third of my life, and I am going to miss you. I am going to miss this. I value what we have here. I value this conversation, this openness that we have here. This relationship that we share. And I am sad that I won't be able to see you every week."

The YouTuber then went on to take a long time talking about why exactly he was retiring and explained that a major reason was the toll it had taken on him and his wife and business partner, Stephanie.

"We knew that we couldn't do this forever. We knew that honestly, we didn't want to do this forever. For as much as I love you and I love overthinking things and I love theorizing, I don't love late nights, I don't love the fact that Steph and I have put work first for over a decade."

Another reason MatPat gave for handing off his channels in March is that the internet landscape has changed over the last decade, and he has other responsibilities like spending time with his family and his son Oliver:

"The internet's changing, my life has changed in the last 13 years. I..I mentioned Oli before. He's the coolest little dude and he's getting older by the minute..."

The 37-year-old also mused about the ways he could have let his YouTube channel go and announced that he did not want to keep doing this till he became irrelevant and wanted to go off on a high note:

"Either just decide the day that you stop uploading and you're like I'm done, or you just keep uploading videos from now until the heat death of the universe and you watch as your relevance slowly dies, or your passion slowly dies. And for me and my journey in this place, I always wanted to go out on a high note"

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Community reactions to MatPat's retirement

The last Game Theory video hosted by MatPat will go live on March 9, and his team members, namely Santi, Lee, and Amy, will be taking over as the primary hosts for all of his channels. The news has naturally shaken fans who have grown up watching Matthew on YouTube, and social media has been flooded with supporters and fellow YouTubers sending heartfelt messages.

Here are some of them:

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MatPat sold his Game Theorists channels to the startup called LunarX back in 2022, and as he mentions in the video, has been planning to step off the gas for a long time. He also mentions how his dedicated team will keep things running and that he is confident that his successors will keep making him proud.