Kai Cenat crushes Ludwig's subscriber record to become the new King of Twitch

Kai Cenat surpasses 300,000 Twitch subscribers

(Image credit: Kai Cenat (via Twitter))

Kai Cenat is the new king of Twitch, surpassing previous title holder Ludwig with a month-long subathon in February that pushed him past 300,000 subscribers. "This journey has been amazing… happy Black History Month," he tweeted.

Twitch confirmed Cenat's accomplishment on February 28, saying that he was officially "the most subscribed channel in Twitch history." Ludwig's mark of 283,000 subscribers had stood since April 2021; prior to that, the big cheese was none other than Ninja, who set a record of more than 269,000 subscribers in 2018.

The new king of Twitch 👑@KaiCenat is now the most subscribed channel in Twitch history, shattering the previous record of 283K subscribers.February 28, 2023

By all appearances, it was a fairly close thing. Cenat surpassed 250,000 subscribers on February 26, 260,000 on February 27, and 270,000 subscribers on February 28. He announced on Twitter that the 300,000 subscriber mark had left behind at 7:15 pm ET on February 28.

Kai Cenat tweets about surpassing 300,000 subscribers on Twitch — (Image credit: Kai Cenat (Twitter))

Cenat began his streaming career more than a decade ago on YouTube, but only moved to livestreaming on Twitch in early 2021. He's a "Just Chatting" main, according to Kotaku, but gets some game streaming done too, with games including Minecraft, GTA5, FIFA 23, and Sons of the Forest. He'd previously set a big milestone in 2022 when he rang up more than 80,000 subscribers, surpassing Felix "xQc" Lengyel to become the most-subscribed English-speaking channel on Twitch. Twitch opted not to remark on that one, leading to some gentle but pointed criticism of the platform from Cenat.

"I need y'all to be watching what's going on, Twitch," he said. "You gotta understand, you feel me, for so many years, people of my color, we've been unrecognized ... I refuse for my community to go unrecognized ... I have no problems with you, Twitch, okay? There's not one time I've seen anybody in my community on the fucking front page of your platform."

Kai Cenat Is Currently #1 English Speaking Streamer on Twitch! WE ARE PROUD OF YOU @KaiCenat @Twitch pic.twitter.com/OQT7T6w5EnSeptember 24, 2022

Cenat was recently the subject of controversy in January when content creator Jovi Pena said she'd been raped by a friend of Cenat at a party he'd invited her to. she'd been invited to by Cenat. In a response video, Cenat said he provided the accused man's name to Pena after the allegations were first made, but that he was otherwise staying uninvolved as the matter is being handled by police.

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Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.