Ludwig Ahgren breaks Twitch subscription record after 31-day stint

Viewers watched him eat, game, and even sleep in a bed that looked like a red sports car.

After streaming on Twitch non-stop for 31 consecutive days, Ludwig Ahgren has broken the website’s record for having the most paying subscribers.

At the time of writing, he had 282,847 and the number is still climbing.

The previous record was set in 2018, when Tyler “Ninja” Blevins amassed 269,154 subscribers.

Ninja tweeted his congratulations to 25-year-old Ludwig, saying “records are meant to be broken”.

Video games website Kotaku described the accomplishment as a “heck of a record”. The third-highest number of subscriptions peaked at 114,387 – a long way behind Ludwig and Ninja’s records.

Twitch offers three tiers of paid subscriptions – and a portion goes to the content creators themselves. It is not yet clear how much money Ludwig has made.

The achievement will have helped raise both his profile and that of the Amazon-owned video-streaming platform.

‘Subathon’

At the start of the “subathon” (short for subscription marathon) every new subscription added 10 seconds to Ludwig’s stream.

He initially thought he would stream for 24 to 48 hours, according to the New York Times, but as the count grew, so did the duration of his livestream.

One month later and possibly with no end in sight, he stopped streaming on Tuesday evening.

In a tweet, Ludwig put into perspective just how long a month can be by highlighting some of the big news stories that had happened during his stint.

Ludwig or his moderators would play videos or movies if he was showering or using the bathroom.

On his final day of streaming, he donated $5 (£3.60) from every new subscription to charity. It is not yet known how much he had raised.

According to USA Today, Ludwig joked he would be “swimming in” cash, and had said: “Let’s try to donate as much money as possible today.”

But the subscription record is not the only thing Ludwig broke.

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He and his friends took turns destroying the plastic sports car bed frame in the final hours of the livestream.

They used a baseball bat and sledgehammer before eventually tossing the pieces over the edge of his porch.

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Cody Godwin is a reporter based in San Francisco. For more news, follow her on Twitter at @MsCodyGodwin