Nothing prevents them from starting at zero, grinding, and hoping that they catch on.

But when Sakana shows up, and says "hey, you know that thing you're currently doing right now? I can have you keep doing the exact same thing, but earning six figures, instantly. By the time you'd build up an audience base to make the same, you'll already be a millionaire with us.", well, it's hard to argue with the logic.

Corporate comes with a built-in fanbase, a built-in marketing department that knows how to get clicks, tech staff to make trailers or even just edit your own content, admins and mods to handle social media and chat, and most importantly, a giant paycheque. Of course, you also get to take vacations, which realistically you can't do as an indie because even a week off will kill The Algorithm's favor of you, but with corporate they can puppet the account and have cross-over takeovers done quick and easy. The trade-off: they set actual quotas and expectations of you, and some of those expectations are high and/or hard to meet.

You don't know much about vTubers, consider it similar to actors. You could be an indie actor, acting on YouTube little independent projects, maybe some minor collabs, or Disney comes up to you, and says "you're the next main character in our multi-billion dollar franchise". That's basically the equivalent of Hololive approaching these indies: Waitresses weighing the pros and cons of going into porn to make ends meet being offered headline acts is the same wealth disparity as a 10-subscriber nobody being picked up by the company that gets their vTubers on the big screen at the Dodger's Stadium to sing the midgame shows.

EDIT: Corporate also comes with legal departments and security forces. Stalking and harassment are part and parcel of the job unfortunately, and so is copyright concerns both creating and breaching of them, so those two departments are very useful to have.

Nothing prevents them from starting at zero, grinding, and hoping that they catch on.

But when Sakana shows up, and says "hey, you know that thing you're currently doing right now? I can have you keep doing the exact same thing, but earning six figures, instantly. By the time you'd build up an audience base to make the same, you'll already be a millionaire with us.", well, it's hard to argue with the logic.

Corporate comes with a built-in fanbase, a built-in marketing department that knows how to get clicks, tech staff to make trailers or even just edit your own content, admins and mods to handle social media and chat, and most importantly, a giant paycheque. Of course, you also get to take vacations, which realistically you can't do as an indie because even a week off will kill The Algorithm's favor of you, but with corporate they can puppet the account and have cross-over takeovers done quick and easy. The trade-off: they set actual quotas and expectations of you, and some of those expectations are high and/or hard to meet.

You don't know much about vTubers, consider it similar to actors. You could be an indie actor, acting on YouTube little independent projects, maybe some minor collabs, or Disney comes up to you, and says "you're the next main character in our multi-billion dollar franchise". That's basically the equivalent of Hololive approaching these indies: Waitresses weighing the pros and cons of going into porn to make ends meet being offered headling acts is the same wealth disparity as a 10-subscriber nobody being picked up by the company that gets their vTubers on the big screen at the Dodger's Stadium to sing the midgame shows.

EDIT: Corporate also comes with legal departments and security forces. Stalking and harassment are part and parcel of the job unfortunately, and so is copyright concerns both creating and breaching of them, so those two departments are very useful to have.

Nothing prevents them from starting at zero, grinding, and hoping that they catch on.

But when Sakana shows up, and says "hey, you know that thing you're currently doing right now? I can have you keep doing the exact same thing, but earning six figures, instantly. By the time you'd build up an audience base to make the same, you'll already be a millionaire with us.", well, it's hard to argue with the logic.

Corporate comes with a built-in fanbase, a built-in marketing department that knows how to get clicks, tech staff to make trailers or even just edit your own content, admins and mods to handle social media and chat, and most importantly, a giant paycheque. Of course, you also get to take vacations, which realistically you can't do as an indie because even a week off will kill The Algorithm's favor of you, but with corporate they can puppet the account and have cross-over takeovers done quick and easy. The trade-off: they set actual quotas and expectations of you, and some of those expectations are high and/or hard to meet.

You don't know much about vTubers, consider it similar to actors. You could be an indie actor, acting on YouTube little independent projects, maybe some minor collabs, or Disney comes up to you, and says "you're the next main character in our multi-billion dollar franchise". That's basically the equivalent of Hololive approaching these indies: Waitresses weighing the pros and cons of going into porn to make ends meet being offered headling acts is the same wealth disparity as a 10-subscriber nobody being picked up by the company that gets their vTubers on the big screen at the Dodger's Stadium to sing the midgame shows.