Gaming Historian is ‘Permanently’ Taking a Step Back from YouTube

Norman Caruso, the creator of the beloved Gaming Historian documentary series on YouTube, has announced that he is ‘permanently’ stepping back from full-time content creation on the site. This news may come as a surprise to many fans of Caruso’s long-running YouTube channel, and this is only the latest in a string of high-profile departures from the social media platform.

Caruso, who began his YouTube career all the way back in 2008, rose to fame over the years by creating extensively researched documentaries on a wide variety of retro video game subjects. Despite his content output rate being fairly light, the Gaming Historian YouTube channel still managed to accumulate over 1 million subscribers throughout its lifespan. However, Caruso’s channel had been inactive for over 10 months after he released a video on the story behind the first video game cartridge in June 2023. It wasn’t until only recently that Caruso finally uploaded a new video on the Gaming Historian channel, with his latest work being a nearly 90-minute documentary on the classic video game The Oregon Trail. Now, with this latest update from Norman Caruso himself, it seems like fans of the Gaming Historian will not be getting any new videos from him anytime soon.

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In a recent tweet from the Gaming Historian Twitter account, Caruso unveiled that he made the “tough decision to permanently take a step back” from his YouTube channel. The main reason Caruso cited as to why he no longer plans to work on YouTube full-time is because of how the creation of his documentaries has taken over “most of [his] life.” Though he still enjoys making the show, he stated that he’d like not to treat content creation as a job, but rather as a hobby going forward. Caruso also announced that he’s shutting down the Patreon account, which he launched back in 2015, on May 1, 2024. Since he’s not going to be working on Gaming Historian full-time anymore, Caruso expressed that he’s no longer “comfortable collecting donations.”

Despite the unfortunate news for fans of his channel, Caruso made sure to point out that “Gaming Historian is not going away” forever and that he isn’t “permanently retiring.” Rather, he reiterated that he’ll “still be working on the show,” but just not as regularly. Although the Gaming Historian channel won’t be as active as it used to be, fans can still look forward to some of Caruso’s future endeavors outside his great gaming documentaries. In addition to occasionally streaming on Twitch, Caruso is also planning to co-host a history/comedy-themed podcast with his wife, titled An Old Timey Podcast. While these things may not interest every Gaming Historian fan, those who greatly enjoy Caruso’s content will still have something to be excited about.

Many YouTubers Have Recently Announced Their Retirements

Though Caruso himself may not be completely quitting his channel, many other notable YouTubers have lately done just that. Perhaps the biggest example of this in recent months is the popular content creator MatPat, who announced his retirement from The Game Theorists earlier this year. Beloved Minecraft YouTuber CaptainSparklez and famed content creator Tom Scott have also announced their exit from the platform in 2024. Back-to-back departures like these reveal just how much of a toll content creation is taking on some YouTubers nowadays.