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Update, December 3: Good news, folks – Helldivers 2 fan film For Liberty! is back up on YouTube as its creator confirms it was indeed the work of "a faulty AI system" that saw it temporarily removed.
In a series of tweets shared today, director and producer Caleb Chamberlain (AKA Plot Coalition) celebrates: "FOR LIBERTY! A HELLDIVERS FILM IS BACK UP! We did it Helldivers! The film has been reinstated back onto YouTube!"
Chamberlain thanks "the entire Plot Coalition Team for not backing down amidst the adversity, Four Hawk Media for guiding and advising us on how to handle the situation, and HaloFollower, HelldiversNOW, TheColeBrew, and Hellhub Official for helping to raise awareness," and also gives a "shoutout to Arrowhead Game Studio for their support during this time and helping us spread accurate information about the situation." Fans are also thanked for their support.
The filmmaker adds: "Although it was a faulty AI system that removed the film when it hit 500k views, I thank the team over at YouTube for escalating and resolving the issue within 24 hours."
Chamberlain concludes: "What happened over the last 24 hours was choosing the 62 Artists who worked on this project and showing up to support Indie Animation. In times like these, this is the most important thing you can do for artists like us!"
The full 52-minute film is available to view entirely for free on YouTube, which is great news for fans of managed democracy everywhere.
Original story:
While we wait for Hollywood's Helldivers 2 movie to be made, a fan film called For Liberty! is here to fill the gap. Or it would be, if not for a YouTube takedown that unceremoniously removed the video from the platform without notice.
After almost a year of anticipation, For Liberty! arrived recently to helped deliver democracy across the known universe. Sadly, the powers that be had other things in mind, with the short production getting taken off YouTube soon after becoming publicly available.
In the immediate aftermath, there were suspicions Sony or Arrowhead Game Studios were involved in some way, especially as the Helldivers movie is moving along, with Fast and Furious director Justin Lin attached to helm. But production company Plot Coalition has been clear that the reason is more arbitrary than that.
"We have no confirmation that Sony was involved in the removal," the team comments on Reddit. "This appears to be an automatic system with YouTube itself that flagged that the film was made available to download for free." Another comment clears the devs of responsibility.
"I am in contact with Arrowhead and I can assure you that they had nothing to do with the takedown," Plot Coalition says, mentioning in another comment: "I am chatting with YouTube right now."
YouTube disallows download links to be placed anywhere in uploads, and the belief as of now is that For Liberty! being freely downloadable from the video description caused an automatic removal. While the producers are trying to sort this out, I wouldn't hold my breath for a resolution too soon. YouTube is famously hard to deal with on these issues, but hopefully the film is freely available again in the near future.
An animated tribute to Helldivers 2, For Liberty! follows several recruits as they take on legions of bugs and other threats. It's a fun, bombastic celebration of the series and its community, and at the very least, this has all helped give the movie more attention.
