Many nostalgic YouTubers seem to be leaving the platform these days and joining them is one of YouTube’s biggest videogame channel owners, Matthew Robert Patrick, who most of us know as MatPat. The internet personality released an emotional video in early 2024 about him leaving all of The Theorists’ channels.
What started in 2011 as a fun place to talk about games soon became a YouTube sensation with millions of subscribers. Matthew Patrick’s nickname used to be MatPat, so the YouTuber decided to keep it as his online name and would upload all kinds of funny audition videos and other related content.
The first Game Theorists video was based on the video game Chrono Trigger, where MatPat tried to break down the game’s quantum mechanics, and how they were inspired by real-life science. This video eventually took off and led to the start of the Game Theorists channel as we know it now.
After almost a decade of uploading exciting lores of games like FNAF, MatPat has finally decided it’s time that he left the channel for good. Matthew would be letting someone else operate each of his Theorist’s channels, with him making appearances once in a while.
Why Did MatPat Leave YouTube? Reason Behind His Exit
All these years, MatPat would regularly upload new entertaining videos on his channels every week. What first started with The Game Theorists eventually became a whole series, with MatPat also making channels called The Food Theorists, The Style Theorists, and The Film Theorists.
Each of these channels gathered millions of subscribers for MatPat in just a matter of a few days. With the addition of GTLive, a channel where Matt and Stephanie would play games on a live stream, the subscriber count kept increasing substantially.
As of writing, The Game Theorists has around 18 million subscribers, while the food channel has 5 million and the film-based channel has about 12 million subscribers.
With so many successful channels, it was a total surprise for MatPat’s fans when he suddenly came out with a video saying goodbye to the Internet forever.
Matthew’s farewell video ended up gathering millions of views in a short amount of time, in which he talked about the reason he was going to be leaving YouTube behind and what would happen to The Game Theorists and other channels once he was gone.
In the 25-minute-long video on The Game Theorists, MatPat reveals that he knew he would eventually have to stop making videos and didn’t want to do it his whole life.
Patrick also revealed that he just wanted to play video games without feeling the need to make a theory out of it and just have fun.
He and Stephanie started The Game Theorists with the hope that they could be able to gather the lore behind each popular video game as time went on.
While many other YouTubers started coming out with similar content, The Game Theorists always remained at the top and had some of the most intriguing theories for every game.
MatPat and Stephanie could no longer enjoy any game for what it was since they’d have to think about every little detail to come up with lore.
Matt just missed the way he’d play without thinking this way and hoped leaving the Game Theorists would give him and Stephanie the chance to enjoy life and video games without feeling any sort of pressure of making content.
Keeping work a priority for almost 10 years may have given Stephanie and Matt the popularity and subscriber count they were looking for, but it also meant that they had very little time to spend with each other or their kid Oliver.
Game Theorists’ Future: The Theory Channels To Have New Hosts
MatPat will be giving his channels away after March 9th, to people he would carefully select for each of his channels. The game theory channel will be led by Tom Robinson, the film one by Lee Collins, the food theory by Santiago Massa, and the style one by Amy Roberts.
These other hosts will continue to release new and exciting theory topics, continuing the legacy that Matt started years ago.
Matt was tasked with streaming the 2023 YouTube awards show, which ended up gathering more than 10 million views, so these channels played a huge role for both him and the YouTube community.
Instead of shutting them down, MatPat hopes to keep releasing entertaining theory breakdowns on his channel, just that he will be either working behind the scenes or won’t be a part of the video at all.
As for what he’ll be doing with his personal life, Matthew and Stephanie will finally get some time off from work and get to be there for Oliver. The YouTuber also revealed that he would like to explore other interests like filmmaking or coming up with an exciting TV series in the future.
Since MatPat was good at making game lore, he could also come up with his own video game soon. For now, MatPat will continue releasing new videos and leave YouTube after March 9th.
Although he won’t be creating any new videos anymore, MatPat will continue to be one of the most-watched nostalgic YouTubers for a whole generation of kids.
