Twitch streamer Ludwig responds to backlash over insanely long subathon

Twitch creator Ludwig has responded to backlash amid his insanely long ‘subathon’ stream in which viewers can add to the total time he has to stay live by subbing and donating.

Ludwig Ahgren has been steadily rising in popularity on Twitch over the past year, becoming a huge name on the platform. With over 1.8 million followers he has a substantial fanbase, and constantly entertains his viewers with a range of gaming-related streams.

While he recently took a brief break from streaming, he quickly returned to content creating in full swing with a ‘subathon.’

A subathon generally refers to a type of stream in which the creator will stay live as long as people continue to donate and sub to them. Each sub extends the stream by a set length of time. If it gets popular enough, this could mean a theoretically endless stream.

Some of the streams get so long that they end up having to eat and sleep whilst broadcasting to potentially thousands of people, and that’s exactly what’s happened to Ludwig.

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He started the stream on March 14, and it didn’t take long for the subs to start rolling in, with fans determined to extend the countdown for as long as possible.

So far he’s been live for over 100 hours, and he’s still going at the time of writing with plenty of hours left on the timer. But there currently doesn’t appear to be a cap on how much time can be added, and viewers are taking full advantage of that.

Despite a few mishaps along the way involving the amount of time being added to the stream, Ludwig appears to be committed to the stream – even if its much longer than he expected.

Ludwig responds to backlash

Despite the popularity of the stream, some people have criticized Ludwig’s subathon because he’s a popular streamer, and he addressed this backlash directly on stream.

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“It doesn’t feel like there’s a very obvious pattern streamers should follow,” he began. “I think if I don’t go live for 11 days, and I’m gonna feel sad because my sub count’s lower, because I’ve tied some of my value to a number on a screen, that I wanna do a subathon to counteract that, that’s pretty normal.”

He went onto say, “obviously I didn’t plan for this, cause I have a trip planned, and this is probably gonna go into the trip. But, you know, it is what it is. I could just end it and scam, but that also feels bad too.”

Ludwig explained that he would be donating about half the money he makes to charity, while also giving some to his mods.

With thousands of viewers still entertained by the stream, no one knows when it will end, but the sheer amount of subs and donations that have flooded in may inspire other streamers to take up the challenge themselves at some point.