"A͏s͏mongold Hires LEECHES" - Ridiculous Kotaku Article About A͏s͏mongold TV

In a recent stream, Asmongold read and reacted to a Kotaku article about his decision to hire former YouTube "re-uploaders"—people who had been making substantial money by clipping and posting his Twitch content without permission. Rather than issuing takedowns, Asmongold brought several of them on to run an official channel, a move the article framed as a surprising turn from a streamer who could have simply shut them down. Asmongold's response to the piece was unusually positive, calling it "a great article," but his commentary reveals a more pragmatic and less generous rationale than the article's narrative suggests.

The Economics of Re-Uploading

The core of the episode is an explanation of how YouTube's monetization system created a gray-market economy around Twitch streamers. Asmongold cited specific numbers: one re-uploader told him they made $27,000 in a month, then $32,000 the next. These are "top 1% salaries," he said, for work that amounts to distributing ads alongside content he created. The mechanism is straightforward: YouTube pays creators based on ad revenue generated by views, and re-uploaders were capitalizing on Asmongold's existing audience without contributing to the original content. The recent YouTube policy change that targeted duplicate content made this model less viable, which is why those re-uploaders approached him about an official arrangement.