DansGaming forced to delete 11 years of streaming after DMCA threat

Daniel "DansGaming" Evans, one of the original streaming stars and a Twitch veteran of over 11 years, has been forced today to delete every VOD of his career after the risk of being hit with DMCA strikes and a potential ban from the platform proved too great.

(Picture: DansGaming)

Unfortunately, the latest round of DMCA warning sent by Twitch on Monday will force many streamers to delete years of their work.

And DansGaming was among the first ones to take this painful step.

The last 10 years of memories on Twitch are gone, but we will start making new better memories starting today

— DansGaming (@Dansgaming) October 22, 2020

Like many others, in fear of strikes and takedowns following an ominous "final warning" message relayed by Twitch, he felt that the only safe option was to delete all of his Twitch VODs.

"It saddens me that Twitch doesn’t have a system in place like YouTube does to keep content in place but give rights holders the pennies that old Vods generate to allow the Vods to stay," Daniel shared his thoughts on Twitter.

Naturally, watching your life work disappearing in the blink of an eye is something that will bring up emotions, and Daniel wasn't hiding them.

Tearing up a bit seeing all those years of Vods fade away. The amount of videos and amount of Data just wouldn't have been feasible to transfer or back up anywhere. Would take months of hard work sorting and uploading one by one elsewhere.

— DansGaming (@Dansgaming) October 22, 2020

Speaking of the "months" that it would take to archive the VODs and save his work ultimatley led Dan to the conclusion he had no choice but to delete everything.

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He is also spoke of his fear that this is just the beginning and that a "real slaughterhouse" will start when live stream DMCA takedowns begin, and people get penalized, muted, or banned with the risk that an unlicensed song could appear in a game like GTA or Fallout.

(Picture: DansGaming) 

Many feel that Twitch hasn't properly communicated with their content creators over this issue leaving many in dark and uncertain what should their next steps be.

Unfortunately for the history of streaming, DansGaming will almost certainly not be the last one to delete their entire history of streaming, and that's something Twitch shouldn't have allowed to happen.

DansGaming started streaming in 2009 making a name for himself as one of the early variety streamers.

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His name is well-known in the streaming community, even among those who are not following him since his likeness is used in the iconic Twitch emote "DansGame" which shows Dan looking disgusted.