From Pmod to Permaban - A friend's story (Dovydas Macys)

the with us Macy's is a 27 year old YouTube creator best known for formerly being the top content creator for the MMORPG runescape since he began playing he has accumulated over 35,000 hours of in-game time spread throughout his accounts won several awards while simultaneously being flown out to jagex headquarters in England to meet the developers of runescape and was given possibly the highest symbol of trust for any regular player by becoming a player moderator soon after things would take a dark turn which may or may not have been attributed to his own healthy habits of playing 16 hours a day and deprivation of what some would consider a fulfilling social life as he would soon lose his player monitor status alongside symbolically losing the support of jagex which would lead him to receive a total of four bands and be the center of several controversies most focusing on his questionable sponsorships and how he decided to advertise them but forming a conclusion into what might have gone wrong wouldn't be fair without telling the school story so let's go back to late 2004 while attending Ida's middle school 14 year old avi das was introduced to runescape through his classmates during a computer class it was here that he would create his first account delese 77 and will later on at only level 64 combat receive his first ban for what he describes as password scamming after this ban he would go on to make another account under the username p'golf ba 0 2 and with this account dovey des will begin paying for membership further increasing his interest in runescape 3 years later on May 13 2009 the eraser gaming YouTube channel was created a racer as that was a standard username to Vitas would use for most online games and gaming because that's what his channel was primarily focused on contrary to popular belief dovey das would not begin with uploading runescape videos but instead with footage at PlayStation 1 and PlayStation Portable games these videos did not include any commentary and would accumulate up to 20 views per video it's also estimated that around this time he was studying philology which is the study of language and more specifically English and German which would be studied at his local university one year later on February 16 2010 the channel slow shift to runescape focused content would begin with three second video that showcases the loot from 150 desert striker worms several months later and after the release of frost dragons another video with a similar structure would be uploaded within a week this video would gain 70,000 views and foreshadowed what his channel would become it was from here that DeVita's will continue to follow the same pattern of uploading videos focused on ps1 and PSP games until their release as the revenant caves in 2011 as there was very little coverage on this update and the drop rates were relatively unknown delitos decided to take matters into his own hands and on february 2nd 2011 exactly one day after the revenant caves were released the Lita's showcased himself killing 50 revenant dragons which is the strongest of all the revenant and in similar fashion to his previous videos this video was primarily focused on the loot that was obtained allegedly former videos were uploaded within the time span of several months covering the revenant drop table which would boost the racer gaming to over 1 million total views and prompt Ovid us to remove over 750 ps1 and PSP game play videos as he began making a transition into runescape content also within this time period he'll go on to make a second channel under the name of PC trainers where the general focus of this channel was to show the viewer how to make single-player mods for various different games the leave as his dedication to creating YouTube videos was made clear on may 16 2011 as he announced he'll be releasing a series of ten hour loot videos and behind the scenes he will begin working up to 16 hours a day this would be his first step and it very successful but considerably unhealthy career maybe in two days maybe in three days I'll start making these CDs and I'll be yeah every day a different boss I'm gonna be showing you results and in seven days I'll see how much I can do in seven days so yeah that's what we will see and here we go it back to the sexy voice again and so for the following year his channel followed a pattern of loot and other bonk style videos and I think it's fair to say that these videos were like no other while most runescape videos covered gear setups or were simply a compilation of PvP kills the Lita's his birth of loot videos brought a much sought after analytical PVM style videos at the runescape community had not next year the Lita's would finally start making money from his channel and although creators that lived in Lithuania could not monetize their videos because monetization was simply not available in their country many people found a loophole to this and partnered with networks such as machinima which is stationed in the US and what these networks usually did is claim your videos in exchange for a cut of the revenue which is exactly what delete us did so on April 2012 eraser gaming became a profitable and promising venture as there was now something to show for it it was around the same time that DeVita's would drop out of university and with perfect timing as he could find success making runescape videos like the creators he had previously admired this cashflow was evident to the viewers as almost one month later dobby Dez's audio quality would improve tremendously as he began using a new high quality microphone that will allow him to stand out for most other channels that and his base voice would only serve to gather a larger following next month on the 21st to Venus will go on to release his first question and answer video we would learn a bit more about who a racer gaming really was his name his country of origin and his personal life - and I wanted to ask you what do you do in your life when you don't play runescape do you have any hobbies or play any sports YouTube is YouTube and runescape is my job okay people need to understand that and the more I do this the more I get paid I try to spend all of my time all of my like weekend's all day all I do is make videos think of ideas play runescape and because the more I do this the more I get the views I get the more views I get more money just over one year after dividends channel con monetized you would go on to purchase his first apartment that he had bought through the money he had made from his channel it's also here that we learned that he's making around $3,000 a month which is more than most doctors earn in his country so I was getting paid I was getting paid - really a lot for a machinima compared to what people making here in Lithuania I was getting paid like more than doctors get paid you would assume it's not that nothing much you know 3,000 would probably be more than doctors what make in this country at least so it's nothing much to people who live in England or the United States you know but yeah so you can actually make living from YouTube with the growth of his channel and his sphere of influence expanding during September 2013 the owners and developers of runescape flew to Vitas and nine other influencers out to jagex headquarters at Cambridge United Kingdom it was here where him and nine others were given the player moderator status which is a status given to a select few players trusted by the company that allows him to report and eventually mute row breakers in the game this status will no doubt give newly-found responsibility to delete us knowing his actions and videos somewhat represented Jagex later on during the same year at runefest 2013 which is a runescape convention ran by Jagex Eraser gaming won a golden gnome award which is an award give to top influencers he won the category of best guides but unfortunately as Davina's did not attend the physical golden gnome was meant to be given to him possibly through mill but it never arrived due to the lack of coordination from Jagex over the next two years the channel name eraser gaming would be changed to a friend and the channel would steadily grow from 20,000 subscribers to a whopping 200,000 at this point a friend will be regarded as one of if not the top runescape creator and to celebrate on April 26 2015 a friend would release a second question and answer video given the viewers a follow-up to his previous Q&A and allow us to see what had changed in his personal life but we would find out that not much outside of runescape and YouTube had changed do you have a girlfriend or a wife I hate when people say a wife because that makes me feel so old but no I don't have any of those at the moment actually it feels like it would be a waste of time because currently I am just focusing on making videos and maybe eventually my mind will change you know some people don't want kids but eventually five years later they have a kid cuz they start wanting them what do you do in the real life besides playing runescape I don't actually do too much I don't go out too much I play runescape pretty much all day and I go to to buy food so I don't I and when I go to buy food I actually pick a shop that is very far away from me so at least I get some kind of exercise but yeah that's all I mean I cannot think of anything it was also around this time that the tension between Russia and Ukraine was peaking prompting countries like Lithuania which is where friend lives to militarize this meant that compulsory military service was reinstated meaning that select Lithuanian citizens would have to receive mandatory military training for nine months and as luck may have it our friend received a letter in the mail saying that he would have to be drafted to attend mandatory military training and for those who don't know I actually received a letter for the military saying that I will have to do mandatory military service for nine months he immediately received support from creators and viewers alike as he would have to halt all video production for nine months and most likely lose half of his audience on YouTube by doing so but with some quick thinking this situation was averted by a friend stating to his immigration office that he lived in a different country while actually staying in Lithuania what I did instantly is I went to migration office and I told them hey guys I'm actually gonna be moving to Latvia next week can you change my living location to Latvia because I'm no longer gonna be living in Lithuania so they did so officially for like four months now I'm not living in Lithuania I'm actually a living in Latvia if anyone looks me up what they see is that okay this guy's living in Latvia let's skip him let's move on to someone who's not living who's living in Lithuania but actually I live in Lithuania while all seem great and a friend could continue making videos another issue was soon to come later in the year on September 14th a friend uploaded a video titled top ten fish loot which included screenshots of expensive in-game items obtained by a phishing and as you would expect phishing or password stealing is heavily against game rules on the same day a friend's player moderator status will be your vote which symbolically meant he was no longer endorsed by jagex and although it may be uncorrelated after the stay various screenshots would emerge of a friend saying and doing some things that some would consider controversial but others like this as it felt that he was somewhat unleashed and allowed all parts including the controversial areas of his personality to flourish nearly one year after losing his player monitor status at runefest 2016 our friend will go on to win top old-school video maker it was also at this point that a friend will focus primarily on making old school runescape content which will mostly be done through his hardcore Ironman series where he will play runescape as well a hardcore Ironman meaning that he will lose the ability to trade with other players and dying in an unsafe location in the game would revoke his hardcore Ironman status it should be noted that he had previously made pseudo Ironman accounts on both runescape 3 and old school runescape and now that the game mode was made official not only did it make things more interesting to watch but you could also see where he fared compared to other hardcore Ironman and this game-mode is what a friend would focus on for the following year as he would continue to upload videos demonstrating on how he had progressed the account in a sort of blog style format he would continue doing this until 2017 which is also considered the year of Fran Felton grace it should also be noted that this same year he received two bans on runescape 1 for using a third-party client that RuneScape's anti cheat system flagged as a body client which is a program that essentially plays the game for you but this was quickly resolved as the staff member of Jagex found out that the client was not one use foreboding but instead simply change the textures in-game the second time was for abusing a bug that allowed players to reproduce a somewhat valuable item this was only a two day ban and he would later upload a video demonstrating that he had dropped all reproduced items and the purpose of abusing the bug was his show his audience how harmful the bug was to the game before he was matched but what came next was much worse than any other band on September 8th 2017 a friend uploaded a video titled this is how it ends he had finally died on his hardcore Ironmen account meaning that he could no longer compete with other hardcore Armin and as many would quickly note his uploads will begin to slow down as he had possibly lost his motivation to make videos there was some hope though as 2018 started with a poll asking his audience if they'd rather see him play on his old ironmen account or create a new hardcore airman and out of 41,000 votes 63% voted in favor of creating a new account and so he did but where his first Ironmen account lasted nearly one year before it died this one did not even make it a month his next video would receive severe backlash as he announced he will be including in video advertisements twice a month that will last around 30 seconds I should add that I was from this point onward that most of his videos would ever 5250 like to dislike ratio and his next video just like the last one would also receive extreme backlash as it was clips of a live stream he did receiving in-game donations from fans and promised that the items he received in-game would be used to make content but many of his yours dislike this as they failed he was selling out or he would use the items to further himself personally it rather to me content and the first video he uploaded of using the donations only served as a catalyst to fuel the hatred and his trust building up in the community and is easily the most disliked video on his channel as he was no only giving his donated wealth to players known for scamming to gauge their reaction so now the players that donated to felt that their money hadn't gone to creating interesting content but rather feeding the most untrustworthy players in runescape from here the uploads will come to a crawl where a friend would have once upload every two to three days now he would only upload a video every week or so he would also address this in a video stating that he was beginning to consider the mental health of playing such long hours and the lack of updates that the game has to cover hey what is up guys my name's a friend and I just wanted to make a video because a lot of people have been asking what the hell is happening with the upload schedule because it's sometimes I upload like three times in a week sometimes I don't upload for like it was like nine days at some point even so basically maybe like six months ago I stopped playing runescape 16 hours a day because I think most of you know that I used to play runescape really a lot especially when hardcore admin came out ideally no lifet like sometimes I would play like 18 hours every day and I would lose sleep and pretty much what would happen is me playing runescape all day go to bed wake up play runescape again and it's not really healthy he would then create his third hardcore Ironman account and for well the videos received somewhat positive reviews as somewhat cite it was a return to form but this account would see the same fate as the previous two and only last about two months it was soon after this that a friend would take on a gambling site as a sponsor and would upload a video advertising their services where air was estimated he was offered anywhere from 40,000 to 100,000 dollars for this one video and not even 24 hours later he would take the video down and all of his accounts will be permanently banned and the problem with the website he was sponsoring is not that it endorsed gambling but rather it encouraged real-world training which is heavily against the games rules and again a friend would apologize to Jagex and his communities saying that he needs the money as he's moving to the Netherlands to live with his girlfriend of seven months which sucks because if you watch my stream you know that I have a girlfriend for like seven months and I'm moving to Netherlands actually in one month to live permanently completely I sold out everything I had here just go Netherlands and live never come back here and from this we learned that Jagex will let him play the game again but only on new accounts as all of his previous accounts will remain permanently banned and during the recording of this video he has yet to upload a video since which from my understanding this is the longest he's gone without uploading a video for a very long time with the entire runescape community watching his next move the story oh do Vitas Macy's or a friend is an interesting one for those wanting my perspective about what's going on with his channel and what I think about his girlfriend while I don't know his girlfriend personally I kinda agree that it won't help his channel but I do hope it will help him as a person because the way he was working up to 16 hours a day and doing nothing else sounds unhealthy and it's an easy way to get depressed so I think a break from YouTube is actually a good thing but then again I am a bit biased because I am a veteran viewer of his and also failed content creator but at this point I care more about him than his content I mean it is sad to see what he's done with his channel and his community but I'm happy to see that he's found someone that makes him happy you know so yeah that about wraps it up this has been the rise and fall of a friend thanks for watching

Channel: Joon The King

Views: 761,487

Rating: 4.7200751 out of 5

Keywords: A friend, Erasergaming, Dovydas, macys, drama, video essay, runescape, osrs, 2018, entertainment, pmod, rs3, jagex, biography, timeline, youtube, oldschool runescape, runefest, banned, profile piece, lofi hip hop, runescape 3, why was a friend banned, lithuania, permabanned, golden gnome, rise and fall, from pmod to perma ban

Id: RnjnNII9NwQ

Length: 18min 8sec (1088 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 09 2018