Sang-hyeok Lee, more popularly known as the legendary Faker in the competitive League of Legends scene, recently launched his first Twitch stream.
To say that Faker's stream was a success is an understatement, as the professional gamer was able to break the Twitch record for most viewers on a stream by an individual.
Faker Sets Twitch Streaming Record
Faker, considered by many as the best League of Legends player in the whole world and a member of the SK Telecom T1 team, launched his first stream on Twitch on Monday.
Faker, along with his SK Telecom T1 teammates, moved away from South Korean streaming platform Azubu into the more popular Twitch as part of a new partnership. In his first stream, Faker was able to amass a peak of 245,100 viewers, shattering the record for most concurrent viewers on a stream by an individual.
Other SK Telecom T1 team members already started streaming their games on Twitch before Faker, but none of them had a similar level of success as the legendary player. Faker is the current mid-laner of the team, and is one of only two players who have won the League of Legends World Championship three times. He also won the 2016 Mid-Season Invitational, after coming in second the previous year.
It can be remembered that in early 2015, Faker already appeared on Twitch, but due to a controversial incident. At the time, Faker and his SK Telecom T1 team had an exclusive streaming deal with Azubu, but a Twitch stream named Spectate Faker was able to find a loophole that rebroadcast footage of Faker's matches by recording them through a third-party client, which meant that the videos were owned by League of Legends developer Riot Games. As such, the recordings could be legally played on Twitch, but Riot Games was eventually able to take the steam offline.
Will Faker Continue To Break Twitch Viewer Records?
The streams of Faker, as popularized by the 2015 controversy, likely contributed to the massive interest of viewers on Twitch, which largely catered to the North American and European players.
Whether Faker will be able to continue breaking records in his future streams, however, is another matter. The recording was filled with issues on volume and lag, and while the stream started with a live translator present so that English speakers will understand what Faker was saying, the translator disappeared.
Faker, staying true to his stoic demeanor, did not say much over the stream, which lasted for over two hours. This continues the trend of his streams on Azubu, wherein he generally did not use a microphone, causing his streams to be seen as boring by most viewers.
"I'm trying to communicate with the fans from now on," Faker said at the beginning of his first Twitch stream, but he did not follow through with his promise and was mostly quiet as he played in the streamed matches.
Faker, with his legendary status as a League of Legends champion, might still be able to draw in viewers with his succeeding streams, but it will be difficult for him to surpass the record that he set in his first time on Twitch if he continues to play in silence.
