History Main / CreatorKiller

* Website/LiveJournal was, from its launch in 1999 until 2007, one of the premier blogging platforms on the web, and quickly became a hub of fandoms and teenage subcultures in the early-mid '00s... until the "strikethrough" and the "boldthrough", a pair of notorious incidents in 2007 when the site permanently suspended hundreds of journals in a clumsy attempt to crack down on sexual content, apparently at the behest of a conservative Christian {{Moral Guardian|s}} group called Warriors for Innocence. Caught in the crossfire were fandom and {{fanfiction}} journals dedicated to discussing the fictional subject matter of various franchises and media properties, as well as journals for survivors of sexual assault. While the site's [[GermansLoveDavidHasselhoff sizable Russian userbase]] went on uninterrupted,[[note]]The Russian tech company SUP Media, which had already licensed the [=LiveJournal=] brand for use in Russia the prior year due to its popularity in that country, would buy LJ outright in December 2007. It would move its offices to Russia in 2009 and its servers in 2016, and in 2017, it changed its terms of service to comply with Russian law.[[/note]] the affair set off a massive exodus of LJ's outraged Western users to Website/{{Tumblr}} and led directly to the creation of the Website/ArchiveOfOurOwn, a fanfiction website that would be owned and operated for and by the broader fandom community.[[note]]Ironically, in 2018 [[HistoryRepeats Tumblr made the exact same mistake as LJ]] and implemented a ham-fisted porn ban that drove off a good portion of its userbase. Tumblr wasn't ''quite'' as badly damaged by that as LJ was, though, and it remains one of the 100 most popular websites in the US and one of the top 200 internationally.[[/note]] Today, the only major Western LJ journal that hasn't moved to another site is the gossip blog Oh No They Didn't.

* ''ComicBook/{{Deathmate}}'' -- the infamous 1993 IntercontinuityCrossover between Creator/ValiantComics and Creator/ImageComics -- is widely cited as the book that killed Valiant, [[ForWantOfANail and to some degree]], [[UsefulNotes/TheGreatComicsCrashOf1996 the western comic industry in general for a while]]. While a crossover between the companies seemed like a good idea at the time, they ended up clashing horribly as not only did neither company have a proper grasp on how to write each other's characters, resulting in a disjointed story, Image was prone to chronic lateness, where by the time Valiant published their share of the work, Image's half didn't come out until at least a year later, and by that point, consumer interest had completely died while shop owners were now stuck with mountains of late pre-order shipments that were now worthless. The massive market boom tanked the reputation and sales of both companies in the following years, but while Image survived thanks to its low overhead, Valiant ended up being bought out by video game developer Creator/{{Acclaim}}, whose ill-advised choices with the company (including a massive culling of continuity and preexisting [=IPs=] while shifting towards making characters suited for video game development) caused it to cease operation by 1999, with Acclaim itself going under a few years later.

* The infamous crossover ''ComicBook/{{Deathmate}}'' is often accused of killing Creator/ValiantComics. The other side, Creator/ImageComics, did recover from it.

* Announced way back in 1964, RCA's [[UsefulNotes/{{CED}} SelectaVision]] video system was intended to be the "next big thing" after color television, but intra-corporate rivalries and mismanagement after David Sarnoff stepped down and was replaced by his son, Robert, in 1965, stalled progress on it for over a decade. It took not one, not two, but ''three'' false starts [[note]]the holographic [=HoloPix=]/[=HoloTape=], the film-based [=PhotoPix=], and a half-hearted attempt at a magnetic system called [=MagTape=], all of which were killed either due to quality issues or because of RCA's losses in their side businesses, particularly their disastrous exit from the computer industry in 1971[[/note]], and had to survive numerous attempts by upper management at killing the project as interest waxed and waned, as well as a compromise deal with RCA's management, dealers and Panasonic in 1976 that saw the [=SelectaVision=] name applied to the first VHS UsefulNotes/{{VCR}} marketed in the [[UsefulNotes/UnitedStates US]] [[note]]the Panasonic-designed RCA VBT-200, which hit shelves in the fall of 1977[[/note]], and a soft reboot in 1977 after it was discovered that JVC had poached the disc system and had started recruiting for ''its'' version (which eventually became VHD). (RCA also deliberately avoided magnetic tape until they were forced to make the switch, since [[ItWillNeverCatchOn they believed it would never be cheap enough for home use.]]) All of this meant it was delayed until spring of '''''1981''''' -- well into the UsefulNotes/{{VCR}} era, and long after Philips' and Creator/{{MCA}}'s competing UsefulNotes/LaserDisc system was introduced. While the format did have some advantages at the time[[note]][=SelectaVision=] movies were significantly cheaper to buy than movies on videocassette or UsefulNotes/LaserDisc, and since RCA massively overproduced them, [=SelectaVision=] discs are still relatively easy to find in TheNewTwenties, decades after the format was discontinued[[/note]], and a factory-fresh disc with a good needle compared quite favorably with [=LaserDisc=], the format had massive durability issues; video quality on repeated plays was plagued with skipping and dropouts, degrading into an unwatchable mess after only a few hundred plays (RCA rated the discs at around 500 plays). More importantly, it didn't offer the recording capability of VHS/Beta; while the discs were cheap to buy, people were still far more interested at the time in recording things they could see for free on TV and watching them later, and video rental was still several years away -- and unlike VHS or Beta, [=SelectaVision=] was a purchase-only format controlled entirely by RCA, meaning that some content was simply not available. After all of the delays and the massive amount of R&D put into it, RCA needed [=SelectaVision=] to be a hit, but the format failed to take off, resulting in RCA finally killing the project in 1984, and its subsequent acquisition and breakup by its former parent General Electric. WebVideo/TechnologyConnections produced a 5-part series about the format's infamously TroubledProduction that [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnpX8d8zRIA&list=PLv0jwu7G_DFVP0SGNlBiBtFVkV5LZ7SOU starts here,]] also covered by the WebVideo/{{Oddity Archive}} [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1f9J2q_fOk here]] along with WebVideo/{{Techmoan}} [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LrPe0rwXOU here.]]

* New media company Gawker Media was brought down in 2016 after getting into [[http://nymag.com/selectall/2016/08/did-i-kill-gawker.html?mid=twitter_nymag a disastrous tangle]] with Wrestling/HulkHogan and Silicon Valley tech guru Peter Thiel. After Gawker gained, posted clips of, and refused to take down a video featuring Hogan having sex with the estranged wife of his friend Bubba the Love Sponge and using racial slurs, the wrestler sued the company for damages caused by the release of the clips, which included [[UnPerson getting scrubbed from the WWE's records]]. Thiel, who had long despised Gawker for outing him as gay, eagerly supported Hogan's lawsuit, using his vast financial resources to pay for Hogan's legal team. Instead of trying to defend the clips as newsworthy, Gawker's legal defense was quite flippant, believing that their breach of Hogan's privacy was protected under the First Amendment and that they'd win the case with no major issues. Instead, they were successfully sued for more money than they were worth (and more than Hogan was originally asking for), resulting in the company filing for bankruptcy three weeks later. Gawker's founder, Nick Denton, later filed for bankruptcy himself after a judge ruled that Hogan could start seizing their assets after it was found that Denton lied about their stock value. The company's bankruptcy culminated in its sale to Creator/{{Univision}}, ending its era of independence, and while Univision announced that the other sites under the former Gawker Media umbrella (Deadspin, Gizmodo, Jalopnik, Jezebel, Kotaku, and Lifehacker) would survive, the company's former flagship, Gawker.com itself, would be shut down as a functioning news organization. The site was relaunched by new owners at Bustle Digital Group in 2021, but it otherwise [[InNameOnly has nothing to do with its original incarnation]].

* The switch to [[TheyChangedItNowItSucks a new layout]] is genuinely agreed to be what killed Creator/AdultSwim's forums in November 2016. It was derided as being a much worse clone of Website/{{Reddit}} that also caused over twelve years' worth of content to [[KeepCirculatingTheTapes fall by the wayside]]. Users and curious visitors left the site in droves, and the switch caused its shutdown in less than a year. [[UsefulNotes/ConspiracyTheory Some people]] think that this was an ''intentional'' move to destroy the forums, since it had long been regarded as a [[WretchedHive cesspool of Internet hatred]], with angry anime fans going after people who liked [as]' live-action programming, and home to a bunch of trolls in general. They changed the layout into something awful so the diehard users would leave, and eventually, there would be nobody left to care about it.

* The critical and commercial flop of ''WesternAnimation/StrangeMagic'' was enough justification on Creator/{{Disney}}'s part to give Creator/TouchstonePictures the ax as the studio severed ties with Creator/DreamWorks later that year; that studio went to mend fences with [[Creator/{{Universal}} Universal Pictures]] (which they had dumped for Disney years earlier, after the studio was spun off from Creator/{{Paramount}}) and shift distribution of DW movies to them). The company bowed down with the release of ''The Light Between Oceans'', which was also a BoxOfficeBomb that was released [[DumpMonths in September]].[[note]]Any thought of Disney reviving Touchstone was put down for good when Disney acquired Creator/TwentiethCenturyFox in 2019, rendering the label redundant[[/note]] Additionally, the failure also marked the end for Creator/GeorgeLucas' mainstream ventures apart from a single scene in ''Film/{{Solo}}'' and a possible StockScream that debuted in ''Film/TheRiseOfSkywalker'', and wound up becoming the only project from [[Creator/{{Lucasfilm}} Lucasfilm Animation]] that was not part of the ''Franchise/StarWars'' franchise.

* Creator/GroupTAC was once one of the most prolific studios in the animation industry, having been best known for works such as ''Literature/NightOnTheGalacticRailroad'' and ''Manga/{{Touch}}''. While most of their works from the early 2000's had decent success, the company was beginning to show signs of turmoil in the late 2000's, as television anime was on the verge of decline and sponsors were scaling back, which isn't helped by the poor reception of ''[[Anime/TamaAndFriends Tama and Friends: Search For It! The Magic Puni-Puni Stone]]'' that left the ''Tama and Friends'' franchise in dormancy for 10 years. However, things got even worse for the studio in 2010; the company had way too little staff left, and it had even lost one of its founders, Atsumi Tashiro, in July, the exact same month as the release of their film adaptation of ''Anime/HoneybeeHutch'' (Co-produced with Creator/TatsunokoProduction). Unfortunately, the film did poorly in its opening week, and because of the very small amount of staff members remaining, it was too difficult to keep Group TAC running, killing it off for good one month later. At that time, they had $6.95 million US dollars (¥585 million) in debt. This led to its final TV production, ''Hana Kappa'', to be handled by other studios, whereas their other film, ''Anime/TheLifeOfGuskouBudori'', almost fell into limbo before Creator/TezukaProductions [[NetworkToTheRescue picked it up the following year]]. Creator/{{Diomedea}}, which split from Group TAC five years prior, remains in operation as of 2023.

* The failure of ''WesternAnimation/TitanAE'' brought down Creator/DonBluth's career, shut down [[Creator/TwentiethCenturyFox Fox Animation Studios]], and helped end the [[UsefulNotes/TheDarkAgeOfAnimation post]]-[[UsefulNotes/TheGoldenAgeOfAnimation Golden Age]] era known as UsefulNotes/TheRenaissanceAgeOfAnimation where the animation medium re-surged in both popularity and quality thanks to increasing challenges by filmmakers and artists against the AnimationAgeGhetto that had dominated the medium for decades. Thus, not only did it bring down the career of a celebrated animator, but also helped end an era that brought out some of the greatest animated media in history. A handful of other 2D animated film flops from Bluth's rivals at Creator/{{Disney}} and Creator/DreamWorksAnimation piled on to ''Titan A.E.'' and ended cinematic 2D animation until the end of the 2000's with the releases of ''WesternAnimation/ThePrincessAndTheFrog'' and ''WesternAnimation/WinnieThePooh2011''. Since then, the only [=2D=] films released in theaters have been based on TV shows: ''[[WesternAnimation/TheSpongeBobMovieSpongeOutOfWater The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water]]'' in 2015, ''[[WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyTheMovie2017 My Little Pony: The Movie]]'' in 2017, ''WesternAnimation/TeenTitansGoToTheMovies'' in 2018, and ''WesternAnimation/TheBobsBurgersMovie'' in 2022.

* While ''WesternAnimation/PinkyDinkyDoo'' was a success, it was cancelled in 2010 and Jumbo Pictures has gone dormant since. They made a block for Sprout called ''Musical Mornings with Coo'' in 2007, but that ended up failing due to low ratings. [[note]] [[ScrewedBytheNetwork The block started at 6 a.m. EST and ended at 9 a.m.]].[[/note]]

* Creator/BeeTrain became dormant in 2012 after its last work, ''Manga/HyougeMono'', suffered TroubledProduction and CreatorBacklash from the mangaka. There's no official statement about what happened, but it appears to have been quietly shut down as a result of several factors, including the founder Koichi Mashimo's apparent retirement from the industry in the same year and a shortage of major hit productions since Bee Train's split with Production I.G in 2007. Many of the studio's old staff seem to have moved over to the independent Creator/CStation.

* Creator/GroupTAC was once one of the most prolific studios in the animation industry, having been best known for works such as ''Literature/NightOnTheGalacticRailroad'' and ''Manga/{{Touch}}''. While most of their works from the early 2000's had decent success, the company was beginning to show signs of turmoil in the late 2000's, as Television Anime was on the verge of decline and sponsors were scaling back, which isn't helped by the poor reception of ''[[Anime/TamaAndFriends Tama and Friends: Search For It! The Magic Puni-Puni Stone]]'' that left the ''Tama and Friends'' franchise in dormancy for 10 years. However, things got even worse for the studio in 2010; the company had way too little staff left, and it had even lost one of its founders, Atsumi Tashiro, in July, the exact same month as the release of their film adaptation of ''Anime/HoneybeeHutch'' (Co-produced with Creator/TatsunokoProduction). Unfortunately, the film did poorly in its opening week, and because of the very small amount of staff members remaining, it was too difficult to keep Group TAC running, killing it off for good one month later. At that time, they had $6.95 million US dollars (¥585 million) in debt. This led to its final TV production, ''Hana Kappa'', to be handled by other studios, whereas their other film, ''Anime/TheLifeOfGuskouBudori'', almost fell into limbo before Creator/TezukaProductions [[NetworkToTheRescue picked it up the following year]]. Creator/{{Diomedea}}, which split from Group TAC five years prior, remained in operation till this day.

[[JustForFun/IThoughtItMeant Do not confuse]] with AIIsACrapshoot or for when an author [[TorchTheFranchiseAndRun wants to kill their own work]]. Has nothing to do with [[KillTheGod killing God]], nor does it have anything to do with the creator dying for a different reason; for the latter you may want DiedDuringProduction, if they died without finishing the work. Also has nothing to do with the God Killer awakening from ''VideoGame/PuzzleAndDragons''.

* In the late '00s, the social news website Digg was the front page of the internet, with more traffic than even Website/{{Facebook}} and the power to drive traffic to any websites that made its front page. That changed overnight on August 25, 2010 after the controversial "Digg v4" redesign, which was [[ObviousBeta extremely buggy]] and removed many popular features. Users fled in droves to the upstart competitor Website/{{Reddit}}, whose founder Alexis Ohanian openly mocked the redesign and suggested that it was driven by venture capital investors playing FollowTheLeader with other websites. Two years later, the site was sold off to Betaworks for just half a million dollars, a tiny fraction of the $200 million it had been valued at just a few years prior. While the site still exists, it is a pale shadow of its former self, little more than a generic news aggregator among many.
* New media company Gawker Media was brought down in 2016 after getting into [[http://nymag.com/selectall/2016/08/did-i-kill-gawker.html?mid=twitter_nymag a disastrous tangle]] with Wrestling/HulkHogan and Silicon Valley tech guru Peter Thiel. After Gawker gained, posted clips of, and refused to take down a video featuring Hogan having sex with the estranged wife of his friend Bubba the Love Sponge and using racial slurs, the wrestler sued the company for damages caused by the release of the clips, which included [[UnPerson getting scrubbed from the WWE's records]]. Thiel, who had long despised Gawker for outing him as gay, eagerly supported Hogan's lawsuit, using his vast financial resources to pay for Hogan's legal team. Instead of trying to defend the clips as newsworthy, Gawker's legal defense was quite flippant, believing that their breach of Hogan's privacy was protected under the First Amendment and that they'd win the case with no major issues. Instead, they were successfully sued for more money than they were worth (and more than Hogan was originally asking for), resulting in the company filing for bankruptcy three weeks later. Gawker's founder, Nick Denton, later filed for bankruptcy himself after a judge ruled that Hogan could start seizing their assets after it was found that Denton lied about their stock value. The company's bankruptcy culminated in its sale to Creator/{{Univision}}, ending its era of independence, and while Univision announced that the other sites under the former Gawker Media umbrella (Deadspin, Gizmodo, Jalopnik, Jezebel, Kotaku, and Lifehacker) would survive, the company's former flagship, Gawker.com itself, would be shut down as a functioning news organization. The site was relaunched by new owners at Bustle Digital Group in 2021, but it otherwise [[InNameOnly has nothing to do with its original incarnation]].
* Website/LiveJournal was, from its launch in 1999 until 2007, one of the premier blogging platforms on the web, and quickly became a hub of fandoms and teenage subcultures in the early-mid '00s... until the "strikethrough" and the "boldthrough", a pair of notorious incidents in 2007 when the site permanently suspended hundreds of journals in a clumsy attempt to crack down on sexual content, apparently at the behest of a conservative Christian {{Moral Guardian|s}} group called Warriors for Innocence. Caught in the crossfire were fandom and {{fanfiction}} journals dedicated to discussing the fictional subject matter of various franchises and media properties, as well as journals for survivors of sexual assault. While the site's [[GermansLoveDavidHasselhoff sizable Russian userbase]] went on uninterrupted,[[note]]The Russian tech company SUP Media, which had already licensed the [=LiveJournal=] brand for use in Russia the prior year due to its popularity in that country, would buy LJ outright in December 2007. It would move its offices to Russia in 2009 and its servers in 2016, and in 2017, it changed its terms of service to comply with Russian law.[[/note]] the affair set off a massive exodus of LJ's outraged Western users to Website/{{Tumblr}} and led directly to the creation of the Website/ArchiveOfOurOwn, a fanfiction website that would be owned and operated for and by the broader fandom community.[[note]]Ironically, in 2018 [[HistoryRepeats Tumblr made the exact same mistake as LJ]] and implemented a ham-fisted porn ban that drove off a good portion of its userbase. Tumblr wasn't ''quite'' as badly damaged by that as LJ was, though, and it remains one of the 100 most popular websites in the US and one of the top 200 internationally.[[/note]] Today, the only major Western LJ journal that hasn't moved to another site is the gossip blog Oh No They Didn't.
* In October 2013, the social news website Slashdot suffered a similar fate to Digg when it launched a beta for a redesign of the site with a simplified appearance and commenting system. While it was initially opt-in only, in February 2014 Slashdot began making it the default and migrating users over to it. The site had been declining for a few years by this point, but this was a tipping point that set off a week-long boycott of Slashdot. While Slashdot eventually backed off from the redesign, it was too little, too late, and Slashdot's userbase fled to Reddit just like Digg's before it.

[[JustForFun/IThoughtItMeant Do not confuse]] with AIIsACrapshoot or for when an author [[TorchTheFranchiseAndRun wants to kill their own work]]. Has nothing to do with [[KillTheGod killing God]], nor does it have anything to do with the creator dying for a different reason; for the latter you may want Trivia/DiedDuringProduction, if they died without finishing the work. Also has nothing to do with the God Killer awakening from ''VideoGame/PuzzleAndDragons''.

[[JustForFun/IThoughtItMeant Do not confuse]] with AIIsACrapshoot or for when an author [[TorchTheFranchiseAndRun wants to kill their own work]]. Has nothing to do with [[KillTheGod killing God]], nor does it have anything to do with the creator dying for a different reason. Also has nothing to do with the God Killer awakening from ''VideoGame/PuzzleAndDragons''.

* New media company Gawker Media was brought down in 2016 after getting into [[http://nymag.com/selectall/2016/08/did-i-kill-gawker.html?mid=twitter_nymag a disastrous tangle]] with Wrestling/HulkHogan and Silicon Valley tech guru Peter Thiel. After Gawker gained and posted clips of a sex tape featuring Hogan and refused to take them down, the wrestler sued the company for damages caused by the release of the clips, which included [[UnPerson getting scrubbed from the WWE's records]]. Thiel, who had long despised Gawker for outing him as gay, eagerly supported Hogan's lawsuit, using his vast financial resources to pay for Hogan's legal team. Instead of trying to defend the clips as newsworthy, Gawker's legal defense was quite flippant, believing that their breach of Hogan's privacy was protected under the First Amendment and that they'd win the case with no major issues. Instead, they were successfully sued for more money than they were worth (and more than Hogan was originally asking for), resulting in the company filing for bankruptcy three weeks later. Gawker's founder, Nick Denton, later filed for bankruptcy himself after a judge ruled that Hogan could start seizing their assets after it was found that Denton lied about their stock value. The company's bankruptcy culminated in its sale to Creator/{{Univision}}, ending its era of independence, and while Univision announced that the other sites under the former Gawker Media umbrella (Deadspin, Gizmodo, Jalopnik, Jezebel, Kotaku, and Lifehacker) would survive, the company's former flagship, Gawker.com itself, would be shut down as a functioning news organization. The site was relaunched by new owners at Bustle Digital Group in 2021, but it otherwise [[InNameOnly has nothing to do with its original incarnation]].

* Creator/GroupTAC was already struggling in the late 2000's, as Television Anime was on the verge of decline and sponsors were scaling back. However, things got even worse for the studio in 2010; the company had way too little staff left, and it had even lost one of its founders, Atsumi Tashiro, in July, the exact same month as the release of their film adaptation of ''Anime/HoneybeeHutch'' (Co-produced with Creator/TatsunokoProduction). Unfortunately, the film did poorly in its opening week, and because of the very small amount of staff members remaining, it was too impossible to keep Group TAC running, killing it off for good one month later. At that time, they had $6.95 million US dollars (¥585 million) in debt. This led to its final TV production, ''Hana Kappa'', to be handled by other studios, whereas their other film, ''Anime/TheLifeOfGuskouBudori'', almost fell into limbo before Creator/TezukaProductions [[NetworkToTheRescue picked it up the following year]]. Creator/{{Diomedea}}, which split from Group TAC five years prior, remained in operation till this day.

* Creator/GroupTAC was already struggling in the late 2000's, as Television Anime was on the verge of decline and sponsors were scaling back. However, things got even worse for the studio in 2010; the company had way too little staff left, and it had even lost one of its founders, Atsumi Tashiro, in July, the exact same month as the release of their film adaptation of ''Anime/HoneybeeHutch'' (Co-produced with Creator/TatsunokoProduction). Unfortunately, the film did poorly in its opening week, and because of the very small amount of staff members remaining, it was too impossible to keep Group TAC running, killing it off for good one month later. At that time, they had $6.95 million US dollars (¥585 million) in debt. This led to its final TV production, ''Hana Kappa'', to be handled by other studios, whereas their other film, ''Anime/TheLifeOfGuskouBudori'', almost fell into limbo before Creator/TezukaProductions [[NetworkToTheRescue picked it up the following year]].

* Hiroaki Shibata, the producer who worked on shows for Creator/ToeiAnimation like ''Anime/DigimonDataSquad'' and ''Anime/AyakashiSamuraiHorrorTales'', met this fate shortly after his brief stunt with ''Anime/PrettyCure'', which lead to him producing the two most infamous seasons of the entire franchise, ''Anime/DokiDokiPrecure'' and ''Anime/HappinessChargePrettyCure''. Not only did the two seasons play back to back, but both of them featured controversial plotlines that heavily tanked viewership and sales during their premieres (''[=DokiDoki=]'' had a BaitAndSwitch SixthRanger that was never alluded to prior who replaced a fan-favorite character, and ''Happiness Charge'' had a LoveTriangle WillTheyOrWontThey storyline with NoEnding that ended up overtaking every other plot element in the season), leading to Toei repaying him by permanently moving him to their ''Franchise/SuperSentai'' department before he could get halfway done with ''Anime/GoPrincessPrettyCure''.

* Creator/WhiteWolf was purchased by Creator/ParadoxInteractive in 2015, but continued to operate on its own, writing and publishing its own books, until 2018. That was when it published the 5th edition ''Camarilla'' sourcebook for ''TabletopGame/VampireTheMasqueradeFifthEdition'', where the RealLife persecution and genocide of Chechnya's LGBTQ+ population was used as set-dressing for, and held secondary to, a vampire conspiracy, and the real-life Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov (referred to as "Sultan Ramzan") was portrayed as the leader of this conspiracy, turning Chechnya into a vampire haven. The book was deemed so offensive, by both LGBTQ+ people and the government of Chechnya, that it [[https://en.crimerussia.com/gromkie-dela/chechens-hate-vampire-the-masquerade-game-for-sultan-ramzan-character/ caused an international incident,]] and only compounded controversies from earlier 5th edition materials that were criticized for what was seen as catering to people with alt-right leanings. It led Paradox to [[https://www.white-wolf.com/newsblog/a-message-from-white-wolf announce]], among other things, that it would integrate White Wolf into itself with new leadership, ending White Wolf as an independent company.

* Hiroaki Shibata, the producer who worked on shows for Creator/ToeiAnimation like ''Anime/DigimonDataSquad'' and ''Anime/AyakashiSamuraiHorrorTales'', met this fate shortly after his brief stunt with ''Anime/PrettyCure'', which lead to him producing the two most infamous seasons of the entire franchise ''Anime/DokiDokiPrecure'' and ''Anime/HappinessChargePrettyCure''. Not only did the two seasons play back to back, but both of them featured controversial plotlines that heavily tank viewership and sales during their premieres (''[=DokiDoki=]'' had a BaitAndSwitch SixthRanger that was never alluded to prior, and ''Happiness Charge'' had a LoveTriangle WillTheyOrWontThey storyline with NoEnding that ended up overtaking every other plot element in the season), leading to Toei repaying him by permanently moving him to their ''Franchise/SuperSentai'' department before he could get halfway done with ''Anime/GoPrincessPrettyCure''.

* Hiroaki Shibata, the producer who worked on shows for Creator/ToeiAnimation like ''Anime/DigimonDataSquad'' and ''Anime/AyakashiSamuraiHorrorTales'', met this fate shortly after his brief stunt with ''Anime/PrettyCure'', which lead to him producing the two most infamous seasons of the entire franchise ''Anime/DokiDokiPrecure'' and ''Anime/HappinessChargePrettyCure''. Not only did the two seasons play back to back, but both of them featured controversial plotlines that heavily tank viewership and sales during their premieres (''DokiDoki'' had a BaitAndSwitch SixthRanger that was never alluded to prior, and ''Happiness Charge'' had a LoveTriangle WillTheyOrWontThey storyline with NoEnding that ended up overtaking every other plot element in the season), leading to Toei repaying him by permanently moving him to their ''Franchise/SuperSentai'' department before he could get halfway done with ''Anime/GoPrincessPrettyCure''.

* Canadian animation studio Cinar went out of business in 2004 after a financial scandal and a plagiarism lawsuit (''WesternAnimation/RobinsonSucroe''). The company later resurfaced as Creator/CookieJarEntertainment. In 2013, Cookie Jar was absorbed into Creator/DHXMedia. ''WesternAnimation/{{Arthur}}'' survived for a few more years after production moved to 9 Story Media Group and Oasis Animation.

* During the '80s and '90s, The Sharper Image was a modestly popular electronics company specializing in appliances such as jogging watches. However, the company had its "big break" during the TurnOfTheMillennium, when they created an air purifier called the Ionic Breeze. The purifier became a huge success, thanks to its compact size and the fact that it didn't require frequent filter changes. However, what was believed to be the product that would make them into a household name instead turned out to be what killed them. In 2003, ''Consumer Reports'' published a negative review of the Ionic Breeze, saying that it essentially didn't work as advertised. This resulted in The Sharper Image suing them for unfair testing practices -- a suit that was thrown out of court when they were to unable to actually demonstrate that ''CR''[='=]s claims were in any way incorrect, damning the Ionic Breeze and vindicating ''CR''[='=]s review. The Ionic Breeze's fate was sealed in 2005, when ''CR'' published an article declaring it a potential health hazard thanks to the large amounts of ozone it had produced, causing sales to plummet. The Sharper Image quickly dissolved, eventually filing Chapter 11 Bankruptcy in 2008. Today, the company exists strictly as a minor subsidiary of several larger corporations.

* Website/LiveJournal was, from its launch in 1999 until 2007, one of the premier blogging platforms on the web, and quickly became a hub of fandoms and teenage subcultures in the early-mid '00s... until the "strikethrough" and the "boldthrough", a pair of notorious incidents in 2007 when the site permanently suspended hundreds of journals in a clumsy attempt to crack down on sexual content, apparently at the behest of a conservative Christian {{Moral Guardian|s}} group called Warriors for Innocence. Caught in the crossfire were fandom and {{fanfiction}} journals dedicated to discussing the fictional subject matter of various franchises and media properties, as well as journals for survivors of sexual assault. While the site's [[GermansLoveDavidHasselhoff sizable Russian userbase]] went on uninterrupted,[[note]]The Russian tech company SUP Media, which had already licensed the [=LiveJournal=] brand for use in Russia the prior year due to its popularity in that country, would buy LJ outright in December 2007. It would move its offices to Russia in 2009 and its servers in 2016, and in 2017, it changed its terms of service to comply with Russian law.[[note]] the affair set off a massive exodus of LJ's outraged Western users to Website/{{Tumblr}} and led directly to the creation of the Website/ArchiveOfOurOwn, a fanfiction website that would be owned and operated for and by the broader fandom community.[[note]]Ironically, in 2018 [[HistoryRepeats Tumblr made the exact same mistake as LJ]] and implemented a ham-fisted porn ban that drove off a good portion of its userbase. Tumblr wasn't ''quite'' as badly damaged by that as LJ was, though, and it remains one of the 100 most popular websites in the US and one of the top 200 internationally.[[/note]] Today, the only major Western LJ journal that hasn't moved to another site is the gossip blog Oh No They Didn't.

* Website/LiveJournal was, from its launch in 1999 until 2007, one of the premier blogging platforms on the web, and quickly became a hub of fandoms and teenage subcultures in the early-mid '00s. And then came the "strikethrough" and the "boldthrough", a pair of notorious incidents in 2007 when the site permanently suspended hundreds of journals in a clumsy attempt to crack down on sexual content, apparently at the behest of a conservative Christian {{Moral Guardian|s}} group called Warriors for Innocence. Caught in the crossfire were fandom and {{fanfiction}} journals dedicated to discussing the fictional subject matter of various franchises and media properties, as well as journals for survivors of sexual assault. While the site's [[GermansLoveDavidHasselhoff sizable Russian userbase]] went on uninterrupted (such that it was eventually bought by a Russian tech company, moved its servers to Russia, and changed its terms of service to comply with Russian law), the affair set off a massive exodus of [=LiveJournal=]'s outraged Western users to Website/{{Tumblr}} and led directly to the creation of the Website/ArchiveOfOurOwn, a fanfiction website that would be owned and operated for and by the broader fandom community. Today, the only major Western LJ journal that hasn't moved to another site is the gossip blog Oh No They Didn't.