Ludwig’s historic Twitch subathon finally ends after 31 days of non-stop streaming

Ludwig Ahgren is free ⁠— 31 days after first starting his now-historic Twitch subathon, the streaming star is finally allowed to shut down his viral 24/7 live broadcast after hitting his “backup” day-limit cap.

On March 14, Ludwig made an ambitious promise: He would keep his Twitch stream online for an extra 15 seconds every time a viewer subscribed to his channel or gifted a “bits” donation.

The star’s ‘subathon’ very quickly went viral.

At stages, Ludwig’s ever-present countdown timer hit heights of 60+ hours. At others, down to just a single second. And, like clockwork, every time it dipped, subscription surges would fire it back up all over again. It’s been a historic Twitch moment ⁠— one that’s written Ludwig into the history books as Twitch’s most subscribed streamer in the process.

Now, a month later, the seemingly endless stream is finally over.

All up, Ludwig raked in more than $1 million in subs ⁠— though he may walk away with less than 6% ⁠of that — and climbed to more than 2.6m followers.

“I’ve never been so consistent with my working out. I slept eight hours a day, ate three meals a day,” he said as the timer ticked down. “It’s been really interesting, being so set in my life. It’s been crazy. We went from 32 million channel views to 72 million. That’s way more than double. Just blows my mind.”

In the last seconds, Ludwig began tearing up.

Over 220,000 tuned in for the final minutes of the stream.

Ludwig mused, “I’m not going to lie… this [subathon] does feel like my apex.”

“But I also just like streaming, so who gives a sh*t?” the Twitch star continued. “All downhill from here? Maybe! But there’s nothing wrong with that, at all.”

It has been quite a ride for Ludwig and his fans.

Over the past 31 days, the Twitch superstar has basically streamed his whole life. He has been doing all his usual gaming, chatting, and watching VODs. On top of that, however, Ludwig has also been sleeping on stream (in a big red race car bed, which he later smashed in the broadcast’s final hours), hosting movies with his roommates, and working out for hours.

Ahgren has even been showering ⁠— in shorts ⁠— on stream.

There was a period where Ludwig even worried the stream may “last forever”.

He was forced to put a hard 31-day cap on the subathon, and let loose his moderators with the banhammers on anyone that dropped more than 100 gifted subs. This even, hilariously, caught well-meaning stars like Dream.

At the end of the subathon, Ahgren’s total subscriptions capped out at more than 282,000. That’s more than $1.6 million, before Twitch takes their cut.

His sub haul is now the clear highest in Twitch history.

Ludwig eventually cracked Ninja’s lofty all-time subscriber record — the Fortnite star boasted an incredible 269,154 subscribers before defecting to Mixer — as well as overtaking other huge Twitch stars like Ranboolive (114,387 just last month), Shroud (101,588 in 2019), and Summit1g (94,941 in 2020).

“Bigger number, better person,” Ahgren tweeted after he became the platform’s most-subbed star. “This was my dream since when I first started streaming on Twitch three years ago. Thank you to all my fans.”

• Read More: Ludwig will make just 0.6% of Twitch sub haul

Ninja also congratulated the newly-crowned Twitch king, writing on Twitter: “Records are meant to be broken. I would be lying if I said wasn’t a little sad, but congrats Ludwig on holding the new sub record on Twitch.”

So now, the historic Twitch subathon run is finally over.

Ludwig, who may finally get some much-needed off-stream rest, says he’s going to look back on his subathon fondly; it’s a little slice of Twitch history he’s carved out for himself. That said, he’s got “absolutely” no plans to do it again.

“I think this was a cool, once-in-a-lifetime experience,” Ludwig said of the subathon. “[During the stream] I was excited every day to wake up, because it’s never going to happen to me again. Will I do it again? Definitely not.”

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Ludwig has confirmed he will now take another short break from streaming before returning to his usual, albeit fairly irregular, Twitch schedule.