The YouTube logo is displayed in the YouTube headquarters lobby in San Bruno, California.
Seth Rosenblatt / CNET
Youtubeit’s always relationship with its greatest individual creator, PewDiePieis back. PewDiePie – real name Felix Kjellberg – agreed to stream exclusively on live stream Youtubethe company said Monday. The Kjellberg YouTube channel has 104 million subscribers, making it the largest individually operated channel in Google’s extensive video service.
The financial terms of the deal have not been released.
“YouTube has been my home for over a decade and live streaming on the platform feels like a natural fit as I continue to look for new ways to create content and interact with fans worldwide,” said Kjellberg in a statement. “Live streaming is something I’m going to focus on in 2020 and beyond, so working with YouTube and being at the forefront of new product features is something special and exciting for the future.”
PewDiePie or Felix Kjellberg has more than 100 million subscribers on its YouTube channel.
DLive
It comes three years after YouTube’s biggest crack with PewDiePie. In 2017, the Wall Street Journal reported PewDiePie videos with jokes with racist or anti-Semitic undertones that also violated advertising for large companies. The story sparked a backlash from the advertiser. Not only did marketers withdraw from the PewDiePie channel, they also pulled huge advertising budgets from YouTube until the service cleaned up their advertising system to make brands “more secure”.
YouTube has cut off PewDiePie’s ability to run ads on its channel, a crucial way to make money, and other companies like Disney have cut ties to it. (YouTube has since restored the status of its ad serving channel.) For YouTube creators, however, this was the spark of the so-called “Adpocalypse, “as stricter advertising standards led developers to complain that their channels had been unfairly demonized.
“I couldn’t be more excited to continue expanding our list of developers who make our platform their exclusive live streaming home to bring fans around the world even more of what they love,” said Ryan Wyatt, Head of Gaming at YouTube in a statement.
Some of the biggest gaming stars have built their followers, at least in part, through popular live streams of their gameplay on websites like YouTube, Amazon Twitch or others. However, live streaming was a relatively small factor in PewDiePie’s popularity. PewDiePie first became known for so-called “Let’s Play” game videos that you watch when needed, and has been expanded to include other types of content such as meme reviews and satirical music videos. But live streams have never been a cornerstone of PewDiePie’s popularity like other gaming stars like Tyler “Ninja” Blevins.
Last year, PewDiePie’s YouTube channel was the first of a single creator that had more than 100 million subscribers. It was a milestone that was crossed during a month-long horse race against the Indian music video and trailer channel T serieswho overtook PewDiePie as YouTube’s largest channel.
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