|
|
It's Tuesday and Netflix is still cooking up new ways to tap into the popularity of KPop Demon Hunters. Its latest strategy is letting Overcooked players embody characters like Rumi, Zoey, and even Derpy the demon tiger. |
|
Today's News |
💸 What's the ROI for Roblox devs? 📈 MrBeast tops the charts 🗳️ A YouTuber runs for Congress 🥇 Rankings hit it big on YouTube 🎿 The Paralympics are in full swing
|
|
|
|
GAME ON |
 | KreeCraft, presumably trying to aura farm. |
|
KreekCraft has spent $100K+ making a Roblox game. What's the ROI for devs? |
The studio: The first game to come out of KreekCraft's Roblox development studio has triggered some blowback. Players dissatisfied with Sail a Brainrot have accused the creator of selling out and trying to milk his audience with microtransactions. |
KreekCraft's response was simple and practical. In a video, the creator noted that he personally financed the studio, which aims to develop Roblox games that will appeal to people in his 30-ish age group. A "quick, fun little brainrot game" was the first title to go live because making Roblox games is "#1 difficult and #2 it costs a lot of money. And if [Sail a Brainrot] does well…this game will fund not only the other project we're working on, but also future cool stuff." |
KreekCraft added that he's spent around $100,000 so far to cover the legalities of getting started and an initial wave of hires for the studio's actual core first project (a game inspired by the 2008 Xbox title Kingdom for Keflings). |
The ROIs: So, what kind of returns can KreekCraft (theoretically) expect if his game becomes a big hit? A few well-known devs recently disclosed their earnings to Bloomberg, giving us a peek at what top ROIs look like on Roblox. |
Nate Colley, who developed Roblox game Fisch, says he now makes $400k/month from microtransactions + LEGO and Walmart licensing royalties. (Fisch has 4.2 billion Roblox visits and sits at ~36,000 concurrent players.) Blue Lock: Rivals developer Evan Zirschky, meanwhile, says he makes eight figures a year. His game has racked up 4.4 billion visits and is currently holding steady at ~19,000 concurrent players. |
Roblox itself has said it paid out $1.5 billion to developers in 2025, with the top 1,000 devs earning an average of $1.3 million each. The top 10 devs earned nearly $40 million each, on average. |
Early visions of the internet imagined a microtransaction economy. Roblox and other gaming platforms show that, for a large swath of people, it's now a reality |
|
HEADLINES IN BRIEF 📰 |
 | If you want to get a lot of views on YouTube, become part of a couple. |
|
|
|
TALKING POLITICS |
 | "The AKGuy" is running for office. (Photo by Brandon Bell/Getty Images) |
|
Will Brandon Herrera become the first YouTuber in Congress? |
The candidate: A Texas politician's sex scandal could lead to a YouTuber being elected to Congress for the very first time. The creator in question—Brandon Herrera—is a firearms enthusiast who shares gun demos and military history lessons with 4.1 million YouTube subscribers. As of March 2026, he's also the de facto Republican nominee in Texas' 23rd Congressional district. |
Herrera's current political run comes two years after he first attempted to win against Congressman Tony Gonzales in the Republican primary. In 2024, the incumbent held onto his seat by a narrow margin—but one fiasco later, the race looks completely different. |
Gonzales has given up his reelection bid after admitting to an inappropriate relationship with a staffer who later died by suicide. Herrera was the Congressman's only Republican challenger, making him not only the red-leaning district's default GOP nominee, but also its likely Congressional rep. |
The strategy: The question now is whether Herrera's opponents will try to use his channel against him. The creator has been described as a "neo-Nazi," and telling statements in his videos support that accusation. |
Herrera, however, has already begun leveraging both his influence as a creator—by posting callout videos targeting Gonzales—and the power of plausible deniability to defend his run. |
"I have a career on the internet doing comedy. If…they don't know the difference between jokes and what I actually believe, then this is going to be a very annoying few months." | | | | - Brandon Herrera via The New York Times |
|
|
We're seeing a similar situation play out in Illinois' ninth Congressional district, where progressive creator Kat Abughazaleh is also running for office. Abughazaleh's anti-Israel stance has made her the target of AIPAC-funded attack ads, but she has used her channel to reflect those broadsides. Now, we'll wait and see which creator (if either) makes it to Washington first. |
|
GLOBAL TOP 50 |
 | Polar Ranks puts things in an order that will activate your fight or flight. |
|
Top 50 Most Viewed YouTube Channels: In 2026, the power of listicles endures |
The tried-and-true tactic: When it comes to indulging in a little engagement bait, ranking has long been a favored tactic among creators. BuzzFeed defined the listicle era by ranking every life experience under the sun, TierZoo turned tier lists into a viable streamer gimmick, and IMDb's Top 250 movies list is a dependable source of cinema-related drama. |
Those kinds of rankings (especially the more controversial ones) feed recommendation algorithms, thus boosting viewership and other forms of engagement. That's never been truer than in the modern short-form era. These days, rage bait fuels many of the top YouTube Shorts channels—so even if your rankings send people running for the nearest comment section, you still end up winning. |
The channel: That's precisely the strategy employed by Polar Ranks, one of the first "rankings only" channels we've seen in the Global Top 50 chart this year. The hub offers viewers a Shorts library full of categorized lists, most of which don't seem to be arranged in any sensical way. In fact, instead of providing analysis or basing its lists on any particular statistics, Polar Ranks often seems to save the most satisfying clip for last—thus triggering a wave of comments from viewers who disagree with its rankings. |
That strategy may seem frustrating for fans, but it's paying off in spades for Polar Ranks. According to data from Gospel Stats, the channel earned 358.9 million views during the week preceding March 8, propelling it into the Global Top 50 for the first time. Just one week earlier, its lifetime channel viewership surpassed one billion. |
|
WATCH THIS 🎿 |
 | U.S. athlete Oksana Masters has now won 20 Paralympic medals |
|
U.S. athletes are cleaning up at the 2026 Winter Paralympics |
The Paralympians: The 2026 Winter Paralympics kicked off last week, bringing multisport icons like Oksana Masters and Kendall Gretsch to Northern Italy. Those two skiers claimed the U.S.'s first gold and silver Paralympic medals of the year, bringing Masters to a grand total of 20 medals (including 10 gold) over the course of her Paralympic career. |
Watch Masters and Gretsch dominate the women's sprint sitting biathlon here. |
|
Want to introduce your brand to Tubefilter's audience? Sponsor the newsletter. |
Was this email forwarded to you? Subscribe here. |
|
Today's newsletter is from: Emily Burton, Drew Baldwin, Sam Gutelle, James Hale, and Josh Cohen. |
