Ninja set a new bar for Twitch on Wednesday night.
Popular streamer Ninja, best known recently for playing the viral hit Fortnite: Battle Royale, teamed up with none other than Drizzy Drake for some Duo action.
As soon as Drake joined the game, and hype turned to reality, it was all but guaranteed that viewer records would be broken. Around 1:06 a.m. Eastern time, Ninja’s stream cleared 500,000 concurrent viewers. After Drake tweeted the stream link to his 36 million followers, the number continued to rise.
With sky-high expectations, Ninja and Drake weren’t able to bring home a victory in their first game. But in their second attempt, Drake and Ninja were in the final minutes in the middle of Wailing Woods. Drake got knocked down, but Ninja killed the final two opponents to record the duo’s first victory.
By the time Ninja was using a grenade launcher to blindly record a second victory, the stream eclipsed 580,000 viewers. Before they dropped for their next game, it was over 600,000.
This winding journey started earlier this March, when Drake followed Ninja on Instagram. The two have been trying to link up since then, but Drake’s busy schedule delayed the process. It was a slow process, but the result was massive views.
Before Ninja’s stream, the record for concurrent Twitch viewers for a single account was for Dr. Disrespect’s return back in February. Twitch confirmed that the return stream reached over 388,000 views, narrowly edging the previous record held by League of Legends streamer Tyler1.
If the 6God wasn’t enough, Ninja tried to go even bigger. There was also an attempt to get Pittsburgh Steelers wide receiver JuJu Smith-Schuster involved, but Ninja told his viewers that JuJu was ill-equipped for the event.
According to Ninja, Smith-Schuster had initially tried to link up with Ninja and stream on his MacBook. After that wouldn’t work, Ninja told the masses on his stream that Smith-Schuster had gone straight to his local Best Buy to buy a brand-new gaming PC.
At around 1:45 a.m. Eastern, it was time for the duo to upgrade to a squad. Out of nowhere, Ninja asked Drake if Internet entrepreneur Kim DotCom could join the party. Dotcom took credit for linking the duo up, but chat was livid at his arrival. The fury increased moments later, when Drake mentioned that Travis Scott could join the squad once Smith-Schuster was ready to play.
At around 2:10 a.m. Eastern, Smith-Schuster finally got in the squad. With a full four stack dropping down, the stream reached over 628,000 viewers.
As 2:30 a.m. Eastern approached, Call of Duty caster Maven summed it up pretty well:
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Drake & Ninja Break All Sorts of Twitch Streaming Records