Streamer Ludwig Ahgren has announced his new streaming platform will be YouTube Gaming starting tomorrow, November 30th. The content creator posted a video to his Twitter account Monday afternoon, surprising fans and casual observers alike.
Although Ahgren has been streaming and creating content for years, he hit massive success in 2021 thanks to his record-breaking Subathon. Outside of a few instances, Ahgren was on-stream for a full month, playing games, reacting to videos, and even sleeping. Ludwig even went on to break Ninja’s record for the most active subscribers on a solo Twitch channel with 283,066 users subscribed to his channel.
Ludwig’s switch to YouTube comes as a major shock considering he didn’t promote the announcement ahead of time. Following his last stream on Twitch, Ahgren was musing on his love for streaming and content creation, but there was not any hint that a major announcement was on the horizon. He even appeared on Mizkif’s Parasocial game show earlier in the day and still there was no indication of what was happening.
Ludwig’s YouTube gaming announcement video features him and business partner Slime driving through Los Angeles in a purple-colored car. It’s the first hint that this may be an announcement, as similar videos tend to use purple as a defining symbol for Twitch. For example, DisguisedToast kept playing on expectations by switching between purple and red objects to keep viewers guessing whether he was going to stream on Twitch or YouTube.
Ludwig’s video, on the other hand, left little doubt, as the purple car exploded and Slime and he turned to a new red car. The video concludes with a brief mention of how YouTube Gaming’s copyright systems are more accommodating for licensed music and confirmation that Ludwig’s first day on the new platform will be November 30th.
As mentioned, this is a huge move for Ludwig Ahgren and a huge “get” for YouTube Gaming. In recent months, the platform has been able to lure both Dr Lupo and TimTheTatman away from Twitch and re-upped CourageJD’s contract to continue streaming on YouTube for the foreseeable future. Ludwig is just the next in a strong lineup of content creators to make the switch.
It will be interesting to see if anyone else follows in close proximity to Ludwig, or if this is it for the remainder of 2021. Since Twitch has come under scrutiny for a lot of its business practices (hence, the exploding car), content creators have likely become more amenable to the idea of switching platforms. But as one of the most successful streamers on Twitch, securing Ludwig certainly wasn’t cheap.