Hell, he even said as much. That he'll most likely make some more videos. It's basically just a departure from the feeling of obligation to keep up a weekly schedule.
Though, he's not even leaving content creation. He's still got plenty of other projects running. That makes him less likely to hop back on than most, since he's actually got real other plans
Exactly! 6 months ago when he made the announcement, that's exactly what he said. He will still be making content across his multiple channels. But his 'new video every Monday' is done with.
It's not about viewership at all imo. It's extremely hard to completely change your lifestyle after 10 years of exact same work. I bet he'll be back very soon, perhaps on random schedule, but still doing the same stuff
He's not even really gone. He's just not doing 52 videos a year, on the regular.
Presumably his next release will be circa February. Just a wild guess for enjoying a long-anticipated break. Then I'd expect another 20-odd videos this year, distributed basically at random.
Not counting videos that are just him and the squad, which will hopefully come back in style. Citation Needed videos are fantastic. Four people with wildly different areas of expertise, who've known each other for ages, faffing about on-camera.
To me, this farewell video was more about ending the weekly churn than anything else. He probably sees the millions of subscribers and figures that people hit that button to get more of exactly what he was producing, and when it would release. The non-commital tone here also suggests that he has no idea how/what is going to change, and that he's taking a indeterminately long break to avoid burnout.
In retrospect, his channel has been astonishingly high quality considering the rate of production he's had. And that's with all these side-projects and local/international travel on top of it all.
Scaling back to less frequent releases may well improve his already impressive content style. I'm excited to see what he does next.