YouTube's Biggest Star PewDiePie to Stream Exclusively with Competitor DLive

PewDiePie, the most popular personality on YouTube, has announced that his livestreams will now be exclusive to competing blockchain-based platform DLive.

According to Variety, DLive “promises far better economic terms for creators” than YouTube, which has been intensely criticized by most YouTube personalities over the past few years for moving away from them in favor of major corporations and television-style content.

Variety reported, Tuesday, that PewDiePie, whose real name is Felix Kjellberg, will “use DLive exclusively (for the next several months, anyway) to present weekly live-streams,” and “is slated to kick off his first official DLive stream on Sunday, April 14, at 10 a.m. PT.” He is expected to still produce daily videos on Youtube.

“DLive is built on top of the Lino Network blockchain-based currency system. The DLive service doesn’t take a cut of the revenue generated by live-streaming creators through subscriptions or digital ‘gifts’ and it pledges that it never will,” Variety explained. “That’s compared with other providers, including Amazon’s Twitch, which keeps 50% of channel subscription revenue. In addition, DLive generates credits to reward other participating live-streamers based on consumption of their content.”

In a statement, Kjellberg declared, “I’m excited to start live-streaming again regularly… DLive is great for me because I’m treated like a real partner just like all of the other streamers on their unique platform.”

Lino Network co-founder Wilson Wei also commented in a statement, “DLive is a place where instead of competing against each other, it benefits creators to support one another… PewDiePie has always been a fierce advocate for the value that creators bring with their hard work, time and effort, and he believes in DLive’s vision.”

Despite Kjellberg being the most subscribed personality on YouTube, with over 93,690,000 subscribers, he, like many other content creators, has been increasingly critical of YouTube over the past few years.

In an article last Friday, the Verge declared that the “golden age of YouTube is over,” noting that the “platform was built on the backs of independent creators, but now YouTube is abandoning them for more traditional content.”

“[T]he company is shifting toward more commercial, advertiser-friendly content at a speed its creator community hasn’t seen before,” explained the Verge. “The golden age of YouTube — the YouTube of a million different creators all making enough money to support themselves by creating videos about doing what they love — is over.”