FaZe Banks admits he might “never” return to YouTube again

FaZe Clan figurehead Ricky ‘Banks’ Banks has admitted he may “never” return to YouTube again, despite the fact the infamous internet personality has built a fanbase of more than 5.38 million subscribers on the platform.

FaZe fans should maybe stop holding their breath for a potential Banks YouTube return, the divisive star revealed earlier this week. He has “no plans, at all” to go back to his regular vlog series in 2020, and maybe won’t ever return.

The 28-year-old first rose to fame on YouTube all the way back in 2011 with a series of Call of Duty highlight videos. He, along with FaZe as a whole, pivoted towards a more entertainer style in 2017, and began releasing semi-regular vlogs.

In mid-2019, the FaZe figurehead’s YouTube content dried up completely. At the time, he said he was “focusing more on building FaZe Clan”. He also began co-hosting the podcast ‘Mom’s Basement’ alongside DramaAlert’s Keemstar.

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Banks returned to YouTube intermittently in the following year, sharing a few small updates on his relationship with Alissa Violet ⁠— which has since ended — and interviewing KSI ahead of his second consecutive Logan Paul fight.

There was always an element of hope from FaZe fans that Banks was just taking a bit of a hiatus from YouTube, and would return. Those hopes appear to have now been dashed, with Banks admitting he may “never return.”

“I’ve been going through some shit… same as the last 28 years,” Banks said on Mike Majlak’s ‘The Night Shift’ series. Majlak then asked him if he’d “ever return,” especially considering 100 Thieves’ Nadeshot demanded he come back.

“Everybody misses Banks!” Majlak said again, calling for him to get back on the YouTube grind. The FaZe star shot down any potential comeback plans: “I won’t return anytime soon… no plans, at all.”

“It’s cool doing stuff like this [guest starring on vlogs], because this is fun,” Banks continued, “but for me personally, I’m being real now, it doesn’t make me happy doing it. Being under the YouTube microscope, I don’t like it. Fine being in other people’s videos though, that’s cool.”

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The idea of Banks testing the waters with a Twitch streaming channel was also floated, but the FaZe star could only laugh. “Oh god no! No… there’s no failsafe, you can edit stuff out [on YouTube] but can’t do that on streaming. No way.”

The related segment begins at 6:17 in the video below.

Banks’ stance on his YouTube return echoes exactly why he took an extended break from the platform in 2018 as well. Two years ago, the 28-year-old took a short break, admitting he just “wasn’t feeling it anymore… wasn’t having fun.”

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“I stopped because I wasn’t having fun with it anymore, I’m only going to do this [YouTube] when I want to do this,” he added back in February, 2019. “If I don’t want to go as hard as I used to, then that’s just how it’s going to be.”

Banks isn’t absent from the internet either. He, alongside Keemstar and Colossal Is Crazy, recently inked a mega-deal with Spotify for their ‘Mom’s Basement’ podcast series. Banks also stars in most FaZe Clan content videos released by the org.