572 Hours Broadcast: Streamer Sets World Record

Andrew "GiantWaffle" Bodine just broke a world record. This November, the streamer dedicated himself to streaming, streaming, and still more streaming. GiantWaffle played video games live on Twitch for an average of 19 hours a day for the whole of November. Altogether, he streamed for 572 hours, setting a new world record. 

The previous record stood at 569 hours and was held by Jackson "JayBigs" Bigsby, who spent August playing Player Unknown's Battlegrounds for hours and hours at a time. GiantWaffle, on the other hand, entertained a supersized audience with Red Dead Redemption 2, Luigi's Mansion 3, Rocket League, and the whole of Death Stranding among other titles. We say "supersized audience" because GiantWaffle told Kotaku his marathon streams brought in an incredible amount of attention. "Viewership goes through the roof for the entirety of the month. Currently I'm averaging four to 10 times my normal statistics such as: viewer hours, unique visitors, subscribers." 

It's this kind of boost in viewership that drives streamers to attempt these record-breaking stream marathons. Despite seeing healthy subscription numbers, stunts like these can be outright dangerous for the well-being of the streamer. Sleepless streams can lead to serious health problems. 2017 saw the death of a World of Tanks streamer attempting a 24-hour stream. Even Ninja has talked about the toll long hours of streaming can take on the body and mind. 

GiantWaffle trained for months in order to acclimate his body to just a few hours of sleep each night. Even so, he acknowledged this strategy has its consequences, saying: "Streaming 19 hours a day isn't healthy. It's very obvious and I'm well aware of it. But when put into perspective, a lot of people trying to break records push themselves to the limit in ways that are not seen as healthy. It's not easy. It was never meant to be easy."

Now that his record is set, GiantWaffle can rest easy. Before taking a well-deserved break he tweeted: "30 Days. Thirty 19 Hour streams in a row. 570+ Hours Streamed. 3 Million Hours Watched. 10,000+ Subs. Streamvember 2019 is COMPLETE! TIME TO SLEEP!"

Sweet dreams, dude.