Ludwig Ahgren announces he is leaving Twitch to stream exclusively on YouTube Gaming
- Ludwig Ahgren announced that he is moving from Twitch to stream exclusively on YouTube Gaming.
- The 26-year-old has over 3.1 million Twitch followers and 2.1 million subscribers on YouTube.
The record-shattering Twitch streamer Ludwig Ahgren, known as just Ludwig, said he will be leaving the platform to stream exclusively on YouTube Gaming.
Ahgren is known for playing the video games "Among Us" and "Mario Party," as well as chatting with viewers in streams, once even cooking Thanksgiving dinner live. He has over 3.1 million Twitch followers and 2.1 million on YouTube, using the handle "Ludwig" on both platforms.
In April, Ahgren broke the record for having the most active subscribers — viewers who pay a monthly fee to gain benefits and support the channel — after hosting a "subathon," which is a specific time range in which a creator works solely to increase their subscriber count and often performs particular activities for viewers to gain subs. Ahgren surpassed Tyler "Ninja" Blevins, who had previously held the record, Insider reported. Ahgren still holds the record for all-time most active subscribers, according to the data analytics website TwitchTracker.
The 26-year-old announced his departure from Twitch with a comedy skit posted to Twitter on Monday.
The clip featured Ahgren and his friend, Anthony "Slime" Bruno, who is not a streamer, driving a purple car into a parking lot. Soon after parking the vehicle and getting out, the car appeared to explode into a blaze of flames. The camera panned over to a similar car that was painted red, and Ahgren and Bruno decided to take it home since they agreed it was "pretty much the same one."
The colored cars appeared to symbolize the two livestreaming services, as Twitch's logo is purple while YouTube Gaming has a red logo. After getting in the vehicle, Ahgren made a comment about how he would not land himself in trouble for playing music in "this car," which appeared to be a subtle jab at how Twitch prohibits creators from using copyright music during livestreams. YouTube allows rights holders to file takedown requests asking the platform to remove videos if creators use copyrighted material.
At the end of the video, Ahgren wrote in on-screen titles that he was going to be streaming exclusively on YouTube Gaming starting Tuesday.
The video has amassed over 2.3 million views, 142,000 likes, and 9,000 retweets.
Twitch supported Ahgren's announcement with a positive reply to his tweet.
"You're a mogul in every sense, Ludwig," the verified Twitch account replied to the tweet. "Best of luck and keep doing big things out there."
Numerous popular Twitch streamers commented on the tweet in support of the move, including the variety gaming streamer Syukkuno and "Minecraft" streamer Thomas "TommyInnit" Simons, who wrote, "Holy crap. pog champ my dude." The left-wing political commentator Hasan Piker commented on the tweet with a joke about being cropped out of Aghren's videos.
Ryan Wyatt, YouTube's Head of Gaming, tweeted on Monday that he was "excited to announce" Ahgren's move to YouTube and wrote that his platform's focus was on "building a world class VOD, short form, and live platform."
Several popular streamers have already made the move from Twitch to YouTube. Benjamin "DrLupo" Lupo signed an exclusive deal to stream on YouTube in August and Tim "TimTheTatman" Betar announced he was leaving Twitch for YouTube Gaming in September. YouTube Gaming launched in 2015.
Wyatt and Ahgren, as well as representatives for Twitch and YouTube, did not immediately respond to requests for further comment.