[1][2] It was launched on April 2, 2012, by actress Felicia Day[3] with Kim Evey and Sheri Bryant[4] as part of YouTube's 100 million dollar original channel initiative.

In early 2019, Critical Role Productions separated from Legendary; in the wake of their departure, Alpha was shut down and Geek & Sundry went into decline.

[6] The company went largely inactive in late 2019 with the YouTube channel primarily used to re-release existing content, though new videos were uploaded sporadically until April 2023.

[7][8] A relaunch and partnership with podcast platform Realm Media took place in September 2024; the channel has returned to producing original actual play content.

The two learned of the initiative in fall 2011, and set about producing a pitch based on a fifth and sixth season of The Guild, Wil Wheaton's Tabletop, Day's The Flog, and Sword & Laser (hosted by Veronica Belmont and Tom Merritt) among other shows.

"[1][10] The channel's founders and show hosts attended a number of fan conventions over the following years including ComicCon,[11] Dragon*Con,[12] VidCon,[13] and WonderCon.

The surge in fan support led to commercial interest in buying the business;[10] in August 2014, Geek & Sundry was acquired by Legendary Entertainment for an undisclosed sum.

[18] After Day heard about a private Dungeons & Dragons home game from Ashley Johnson, she approached the group about playing it in a live-streamed format for Geek & Sundry;[19][20][21] Critical Role began airing on March 12, 2015;[22] however, the show remained creator-owned.

[25] In June 2016, Legendary Digital Networks (LDN) announced a new subscription streaming service, Alpha, which would include programming from both Nerdist and Geek & Sundry.

[46][47] L.A. by Night (based on Vampire: The Masquerade) premiered in September as a weekly show; Jason Carl, Brand Marketing Manager for World of Darkness, acted as the Storyteller.

[52]: 0:45 The departure of Critical Role in February 2019 marked "the beginning of a swift decline for the company",[53] as it and Talks Machina had been Geek & Sundry's most popular shows by far.

[54][55][56][57] The Alpha service was shut down in March – only weeks after Critical Role's departure[58] – with Geek & Sundry content migrating to their YouTube and Twitch channels.

[59] In April 2019, Wheaton announced that he was suing Geek & Sundry for breach of contract over distribution deals for Titansgrave: The Ashes of Valkana which he was not consulted on.

[62] Some further tabletop shows did however run during 2019, including Jason Bulmahn's Pathfinder: Knights of Everflame and Woll's Lost Odyssey: The Book of Knowledge.

[70] Twitch Tracker stopped logging subscriptions in October 2020 for the channel, at which point there were 52 remaining,[38] and Geek & Sundry was left largely inactive.

[74][75] Additional episodes of Becca Scott's How to Play were released from February 2021 to June 2022, as the first original content on the channel since the layoffs the previous summer and the sole ongoing G&S property at the time.

It is led by game master Amy Vorpahl with Danielle Radford, Dan Casey, and Jason Nguyen as the main players.

[9] On revitalizing Geek & Sundry, Casey commented that they "have been working on this relaunch for a few years" and that it had "really gained meaningful momentum in early 2023 thanks in part to [their] partnership with Realm".

[85] Friedman highlighted that Critical Role's "layout eliminated the awkward elements of the wide-angle lenses and multipurpose tables, cables, and other clutter.

Even in 2015, as Critical Role began to stream, Geek & Sundry was producing fullscreen, edited multi-camera shows like Wil Wheaton's Titansgrave.

Vampire the Masquerade: LA by Night was moved to the World of Darkness channel and received a fourth and fifth season before its conclusion in October 2021.

[86] Em Friedman, for Polygon, stated that L.A. by Night "survived Geek & Sundry's decline [...] in no small part to the masterful work of storyteller and series creator Jason Carl".

[88] Several senior Legendary Digital Networks staff joined Critical Role Productions after it split in 2019, such as Ed Lopez, Rachel Romero, and Ivan van Norman who became head of their tabletop game publishing division Darrington Press.