Josh Strife Hayes is an English gaming YouTuber who makes videos about MMOs.
YouTube Career[]
Josh started his channel on March 10, 2017, uploading his first video on the same day. It was a Twitch VOD of him doing a Dark Souls 3 Soul Level 1 playthrough.
After a few months of inactivity he began uploading his very first MMO related videos in the form of dungeon guides for Neverwinter, uploading around a dozen guides in the span of a few days. For several months after that he would upload playthroughs of various different single-player games.
On January 7, 2019 he uploaded A beginners guide to TERA which would mark a shift on the channel to the MMO content for which he is now known. It was during this time that the channel started growing significantly with his beginner guides for TERA, Old School Runescape, Guild Wars 2, and World of Warcraft bringing thousands of new viewers to the channel.
On July 19, 2020 he began his popular Worst MMO Ever? series with the first video titled "Worst MMO Ever? - League of Angels 3 [1 hour gameplay review]".
During May of 2021 his channel would see explosive growth (receiving 50k subscribers in one month) after making a series of videos on the Dreamworld MMO which received heavy criticism within the MMO community for being a scam. Part of this explosive growth was also due to him playing Warframe on Twitch at the time, with Worst MMO Ever? - Warframe being uploaded a couple of months later on July 31st 2021. This video would go on to be one of Josh's most popular videos, having 2.8M views as of October 2024.
From 2021 onwards, Josh would continue his Worst MMO Ever? series, while also uploading several other types of videos, including comedic skits related to gaming, videos explaining gaming terms such as What is Pay To Win? (March 2024), several videos delving into Crypto, such as What the hell are NFT's? (January 2022) due to the proliferation of "Crypto MMOs", and also continuing previous series like "MMOPINION" (MMO Opinion) and "Should you play?".
In late 2021, he would upload 2 of his most popular videos yet, with Worst MMO Ever? - Neverwinter being uploaded on the 27th November and accumulating 2.9M views (as of October 2024), followed shortly thereafter by New World - Timeline of a Failure on the 8th December. The video gave a detailed overview of the issues, bugs and community feedback on Amazon's MMO "New World" and the video has garnered 4.8M views as of October 2024, being Josh's most popular video on the channel.
Since that point, Josh's channel saw steady, albeit small amounts of growth, up until June of 2022, when his channel saw an increase of 62,000 subscribers in that month alone [1]. This was in large part due to his coverage and critique of Blizzard's new title "Diablo Immortal", which rose to infamy in gaming circles and spawned the meme "Do you guys not have phones?". Josh's video The Immoral Design of Diablo Immortal deep-dived into the game design decisions, notably in regards to monetization, with a heavy critique of said decisions. Since its upload, the video has garnered 3.4M views (October 2024) and is Josh's second-most popular video on his channel.
Other Channels[]
On the 19th August 2021, a fan-channel was created under the name "Shrinking Text", which uploaded various clips and VOD-snippets from Josh's livestreams on Twitch. Once the channel reached 10,000 subscribers, the original creator reached out to Josh enquiring about what he would like to do, as the creator did not feel completely comfortable gaining income from Josh's content. Josh responded saying that the channel could become official, with the original creator still in charge. The channel was later rebranded to Josh Strife Says to keep in-line with the current naming theme of Josh's channels.[2]
On the 16th September 2021, Josh would create a second channel Josh Strife Plays, dedicated to long-form reviews and critiques of vintage and nostalgic video-games, to answer the question "Were they any good?". As of the 1st of October 2024, this channel has 40 videos, all within the "Was it any good?" series and has accumulated 457K subscribers.
Josh Strife Replays was created on the 6th February 2022 and is dedicated to uploading full VODs of Josh's Twitch streams.