Story

Who SpookyCat is

SpookyCat makes Minecraft videos about anarchy servers: worlds where griefing, raids and blowing up someone’s base are all allowed. The videos are in Russian. Nearly every one has a big goal: build a trap, catch cheaters, make a billion coins or beat the clock.

Since 2023 most of them are filmed on SpookyTime, the server SpookyCat opened together with gamemax.

How it started

SpookyCat started with PvP videos on duel servers: he recorded fights with other players and made small edits. For a long time nothing worked: the videos got 50–100 views, and three months in they were still getting about 50. He kept going.

The first successes came on griefer servers: 500 views, then 1,000. He moved from server to server, reached about 20,000 subscribers and then opened his own server, SpookyTime.

How the channel grew

The channel appeared on April 28, 2020. In August 2022 SpookyCat started SpookyTeam, a Telegram channel where he posts about new videos, shares video notes and runs polls and giveaways.

Growth took off in 2023. In May a new video got 30,000 views in a day, by the end of summer there were about 35,000 subscribers, in September a video passed 200,000 views for the first time, and in December the channel was close to 50,000.

In April 2024 the channel reached 100,000 subscribers, and 165,000 in April 2025. According to Social Blade, on November 30, 2025 it had 174,000 subscribers, 462 uploads and more than 60 million views.

Streams helped a lot. In 2024 SpookyCat started streaming in the YouTube Shorts format, vertically, and one of those streams once drew about 5,000 viewers.

A server of his own

On January 6, 2023 SpookyCat opened SpookyTime and went live the same day with the stream “I opened my own server!”. That evening the team said more than 1,600 players had been online on day one. The first wipe came on January 12.

SpookyCat doesn’t just film there, he also comes up with updates: in spring 2023 he wrote that most of the ideas in the big update were his. Viewers have a say too: in 2024 his Telegram voted on a cooldown for totems and on keeping the end-of-wipe giveaway.

SpookyTime is where the big collab videos came out, for example with the YouTubers Lolchik and Evil, and hype videos with friends that got around 100,000 views. It’s also where his audience gathered: people who want to play together on one server. SpookyCat plays there himself every day.

On wipe and giveaway days SpookyCat often streams straight from the server, and SpookyTime celebrates its birthday on January 6.

How the videos get made

Some videos take a very long time. Before the 50-talisman challenge came out, SpookyCat said he had 16 hours of footage, and the trap base released on August 4, 2024 took him a whole year.

Only the best parts of a long recording make it in: once SpookyCat wrote that seven hours of footage gave him ten minutes of top moments. In spring 2025 he switched to 15–20 minute videos, “tight and with no filler”. Shorts and streams fill the gaps between the big videos.

The longest video took about a month to film: a collab with a friend about the best wipe on the server, almost two hours long. Here is how SpookyCat says a video like that gets made. First comes 60–100 hours of clean footage. It has to be watched and voiced, which takes about five more hours: the dull parts go and only the best stays. Then the voiceover is edited and the footage is cut again to fit it, so all 60–100 hours get watched once more. Next is the replay mod: flyovers and third-person shots, and the whole recording again. Last come 3D effects and animations, each such scene taking half an hour to an hour. In the end one video is hundreds of hours of work.

Cheaters and the second channel

A whole series is about cheat checks and a moderator’s days on SpookyTime: demoted Dukes, “cheaters’ moms” turning up at checks, and trolling. Since December 2023 some of these come out on a second channel, SpookyPet.

Shorts go out on SpookyPet too. SpookyCat streamed there as well and grew the channel to about 22,000 subscribers, and its videos about moderator days and banning cheaters get 100,000–200,000 views.

Why the main channel is down

SpookyCat’s main channel is down right now because of strikes. Here is how he explains it. The first strikes came in summer 2025. SpookyCat wrote to the sender, who said it was a mistake and withdrew them. In winter the same person sent strikes again, this time claiming the project had sold its player database.

What actually happened: in November 2025, before the global winter wipe, attackers found a vulnerability in SpookyTime and got into the part of the database that held passwords. From November 19 to 29 the server was off while the holes were closed, and the project lost money and some of its players over it. All the vulnerabilities have been fixed since.

Selling the database for 500,000 rubles, SpookyCat says, makes no sense: in the last six months the Fortuna contest alone gave players about 700,000 rubles, on top of the team’s pay and the hosting. He says he wouldn’t sell it for one, two or even five million, because you can’t buy back a reputation.

The channel should be back soon. Until then the second channel, SpookyPet, works as the main one.

Guests

In autumn 2024 the streamer Ivan Zolo played on SpookyTime. Together with the server he ran a 15,000-ruble TikTok contest, and on November 9 the video where SpookyCat teaches him to play Minecraft came out. In December there was another contest with Zolo, this time for 25,000 rubles.

The community

SpookyTeam has more than two thousand subscribers, and viewers have a chat of their own. That’s where the polls happen, videos get discussed and prizes go out: Duke ranks, tokens, donor cases and money. SpookyCat has even posted payment receipts for prizes so anyone could check them.

There are shared events too: a PvP tournament with viewers in October 2023, PvP runs with viewers on streams, and a raid on SpookyCat’s own base with tasks and prizes.

What’s next

New videos, streams and wipes on SpookyTime. While the main channel is down, videos and streams go out on SpookyPet, and SpookyTeam hears about them first.