Why is Dropout changing so much? CEO Sam Reich explains

According to CEO Sam Reich, that rush of innovations wasn’t deliberately planned as a wave.

“These projects, a lot of which are finding light now, have been in the works for a long time,” he tells Polygon. “It’s sort of a coincidence that they’re all landing in 2026. But they are all things that we think will contribute meaningfully to the business.”

How have the new projects landed with fans? Unsurprisingly, Dropout’s results have varied.

“To take them item by item: I think Superfan is off to a good start,” he says. “We’re a little worried about alienating our core fan base, first and foremost. So we really wanted to launch it with limited proposition value. And now we’re kind of stuck in this zone where it’s like, ‘In order to grow this thing, we do have to make it more meaningful in terms of proposition value? And what is that going to be?’ And answering that question has been kind of a fun creative exercise. So suffice it to say, not a gangbuster success — middling success, enough that we’ll continue to work on it.”

Regarding Dropout’s first pickup of an outside show, Don’t Hug Me, I’m Scared, Reich says, “The fandom has embraced it a surprising lot. I think licensing is a little tricky for us, because even with Don’t Hug Me being a success, we can only scale it so much and still feel like we are doing honor to the Dropout ethos. There aren’t a thousand Don’t Hug Me, I’m Scareds out there. So we’ll continue to work our way outward.”

The 24/7 cable-style streaming channel, Reich says, has gotten “a surprisingly good response.” He wants to “invest a little bit more in diversifying it, make sure it stays fresh, blah, blah, blah.”

As to Game Changer: Home Edition, he says the Kickstarter’s massive success is “consistent with our outermost expectations with performance.”

“We thought there was a chance of this, but it was kind of like the outer Saturn ring of expectation in terms of how it’s performing. We have a saying around here, an anti-perfectionist saying, which is ‘Shoot for A-minus.’ The reason being, we have to experiment and be comfortable with a bit of failure in order to innovate. Innovation comes with failure. And I think A-minus is exactly the zone we’re in.”

When the Game Changer Blu-ray set became available for pre-order, it sold out instantly. (It appears to be available again at Dropout’s merch store — for now.) That suggests an audience for more Dropout home video sets. Reich says he does want to continue putting Dropout shows on disc, though “it’s a little more complicated than you might think, making them. But my mission is to try to have a more robust offering of Blu-rays by the holiday season of 2026.”

Even if there was no specific plan behind 2026’s new wave of experimentation, there is still something of a philosophy behind it all: Not just “Shoot for A-minus,” Reich says, but an urge to make sure any given step away from the company’s core focus on original streaming gaming and comedy shows meaningfully contributes to the company’s brand and bottom line.

“We try not to get too consumed by pet projects merely because they’re cool and shiny,” he says. “In the case of something like Game Changer: Home Edition, we really do see a path for it where it’s something that we can continue to expand on every year.”

But he describes Dropout as “a simple company” that’s always trying to balance its staff’s creative ambitions with practicality.

Photo: Kate Elliott/Dropout

“I’m determined to keep it simple even as it gets bigger — and bigger companies inevitably get more complex,” Reich says. “But I think the shadow side of simplicity is sometimes that we’re not doing cool and obvious things. And I think it’s, in some ways, a year of cool and obvious things, where we finally have the opportunity to grow up in a few key ways. If we didn’t see that, we probably wouldn’t be as invested in Dropout as we are.”

Meanwhile, as Dropout’s profile expands, some of its core players are getting increasingly prominent outside careers — a good thing for their future, but a problematic one for a company that specializes in getting viewers to emotionally invest in specific performers and their interactions. Brennan Lee Mulligan is GMing for Critical Role. Vic Michaelis is starring in TV and movies. Josh Ruben has directed several well-received horror movies, including the 2025 standout Heart Eyes. Jeremy Culhane has joined the Saturday Night Live cast, Izzy Roland has made an independent supernatural-drama movie and has another in the works, and so on. Mulligan also derisively brings up his own age and the core cast’s age from time to time during Dropout appearances, suggesting that he’s sometimes embarrassed to still be doing goofy subversive comedy in his 30s, now nearly 40s. What’s the plan for Dropout’s future if its core cast eventually wants to move on to other things?

“I’ve fielded questions like this before, and it doesn’t worry me very much,” Reich says. “Maybe it should. I do think there is a way in which this happens very organically. I’m still doing this, and I started doing it when I was 21. That’s when I was first hired by CollegeHumor. And the content has managed to grow up with us in a way that’s very organic. We tend to appeal to both the young people who love comedy, and folks about the age we are.”

Reich points to Greg Davies, Alex Horne, and Taskmaster as evidence that Dropout shows like Game Changer and Make Some Noise should be able to continue for decades, in part because Dropout keeps investing in new comedians.

“Very naturally, the comedy scene in Los Angeles and on the internet itself unfolds in such a way where younger comedians are arriving in the mix all the time,” he says. “I don’t think that people are aware of there being much age disparity on stage, but there already is. Demi [Adejuyigbe] is meaningfully younger than us. Anna [Garcia] is even younger. And they fit right in. I mean, in my mind, there comes a point where just good comedy is good comedy and it’s sort of ageless. Now, will I still be doing Game Changer at the age of 60 or 70? Right now, I can only say I rather hope so.”