1.7m say farewell to YouTube series

By James GregoryBBC News

A UK YouTuber thanked his millions of subscribers for years of support as he called time on an 800-episode series.

Joseph Garrett, from Hampshire, voiced his character Stampy Cat for the final time on Saturday, drawing 1.7m viewers.

The online feline leads players through the video game Minecraft, building his own world and commentating as he goes.

"It is sad to be saying goodbye to my lovely world, but I think it's the right moment to do it," Garrett said in the final episode.

"Thank you to everyone who has watched me over the years. It has been a truly special chapter of my life," he added in the video description.

Garrett launched his Stampy YouTube channel in 2011 at the age of 20. He started uploading "Let's Play" videos of Minecraft in 2012 - a format which documents the playthrough of the game with a running commentary.

The videos resulted in rapid growth for his channel and were a big hit among children, his primary audience.

By the time of Saturday's final episode of the Stampy's Lovely World series more than a decade later, the channel had amassed 10.8m subscribers.

Saturday's episode, titled "Thanks for Watching", has been viewed more than 1.7m times and attracted thousands of comments from fans wishing to pay tribute to Garrett's career as Stampy.

"Stampy didn't just construct hundreds of buildings in Lovely World, he constructed millions of childhoods," said one fan.

"This man raised a whole generation," another wrote.

Writing on social media platform X afterwards, Garrett described his time as Stampy as a "fantastic ride", adding: "I'm glad I got to go out in the way I wanted."

Minecraft is the world's best-selling video game. It is extremely popular with children, young adults, and adults alike, due to its sandbox nature - meaning if you can imagine it, you can build it with the game's Lego-like blocks.

Last weekend, developer Mojang Studios revealed it had now sold more than 300 million copies worldwide.

There are several different game modes to choose from but there is a large amount of freedom involved.

Minecraft was released by Mojang Studios in November 2011, but a pre-release, unfinished version of the game was first available in 2009.

It was bought by Microsoft in 2014 for $2.5bn (£2bn) and has become a mainstay in its gaming empire - which Microsoft has just significantly expanded with its record-breaking $69bn takeover of Call of Duty maker Activision Blizzard.

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