"Guess who is now streaming exclusively on YouTube?" Is the tweet of the official YouTube gaming channel that announced the exclusive deal between the platform and the YouTuber PewDiePie. From now on Felix Kjellberg will only stream on YouTube and thus turns his back on the blockchain livestream platform DLive, with which he had closed an exclusive deal in 2019.
Guess who's streaming exclusively on YouTube now? pic.twitter.com/05DXIwkkyz
– YouTube gaming at? (@YouTubeGaming) May 4, 2020
PewDiePie wants to focus on streaming: In a statement (via PC gamer), Kjellberg stated that he would now like to concentrate more on live streaming and that the partnership with YouTube offered him many opportunities there: »YouTube was my home for over a decade, and doing live streaming there only seems natural«
PewDiePie is still one of the world's largest YouTubers. With 104 million subscribers on YouTube and around 25 billion video views, the Swede thrilled many viewers. It wasn't until the end of August 2019 that he became the first solo YouTuber to hit 100 million subscribers.
Announcement creates discussion
The announced partnership between PewDiePie and YouTube already provided for the tweet linked above critical comments and discussions. The reason for this is past controversy about the streamer. Kjellberg repeatedly attracted attention with racist and anti-Semitic statements.
PewDiePie kicked off what was probably the biggest debate with a video in which, among other things, two men in India paid to hold up a sign that reads "Death to all Jews." There was a huge surge of outrage, followed by Disney's decision to end their partnership with PewDiePie.
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PewDiePie banned across China for Winnie the Pooh comparison
YouTube does not promise special treatment
Despite the past controversies, YouTube closed the exclusive deal with PewDiePie, but announced that it would not grant the star special treatment. YouTube told PC Gamer that it was continue to act against racist and anti-Semitic comments should an incident occur again in the future:
"If he violated our guidelines today, we would take the same action we would any other YouTuber."
