The “grand gesture” thing I could possibly see (though if they’ve already decided to do this, I honestly think it would be more likely that they’d scrap the brand entirely than that they’d do that), but everything else you’ve suggested could just as easily be done if the old content was still up. And even they wanted…

I guarantee half the comments on any new channel that they make later will be nothing but complaints and people asking them to bring the old stuff back.

Anyone who cares about the name will already know what the old content was like, and now they’ve destroyed a good portion of the goodwill associated with it by doing this.

If you’re rebranding to that extent, then you might as well just change the name of the company. And at that point, you’re no longer associated with the old content, anyway, so you might as well keep it up.

“We are focused on creating new content with the Machinima team, which will be distributed on new channels to be announced in the coming months.”

It’s a random spreadsheet on the Internet. There’s seemingly no verification as to whether the people suggesting names for it are actually “women warning other women about abusers.” When it’s anonymous and there’s no risk whatsoever of making false accusations, the chances of false claims are obviously way higher than…

Agreed to a point, but when it’s a spreadsheet on the Internet that anyone can anonymously submit names to, do you really think the odds of false accusations wouldn’t be higher than they normally would be under other circumstances? To be honest, I’m shocked that it isn’t being trolled already (or at least not in an…

Not to mention that any fandom is going to have some people like this and blaming the people who aren’t (which is the vast majority) for not “calling it out” is completely unproductive.