PewDiePie Is in Soft Retirement Following a Move to Japan With His Wife

Few content creators were as dominant on the internet for as long as PewDiePie. The Video gaming YouTuber had the most popular channel on the platform for years, and he was only surpassed in 2023 by Mr. Beast. More recently, though, PewDiePie has retreated somewhat from YouTube.

Of course, because he's still a content creator, PewDiePie still posts on his channel pretty regularly, but he's no longer the prolific creator that he was at his peak. Here's what we know about what happened to him.

After roughly a decade of internet dominance, PewDiePie, whose real name is Felix Arvid Ulf Kjellberg, began to slowly step away from YouTube starting in 2020. He said in one video that he viewed himself as "retired" from the channel. In 2023, he made an even more drastic step when he announced that he would be stepping away from his channel altogether to prepare for the birth of his first child.

As of June 2024, though, PewDiePie is back to posting on his channel fairly regularly, but it doesn't seem totally dominate his existence the way it once did. What's more, his videos are now much more vlogs about his life and are less focused on video games than they once were. Thanks to his subscriber base of more than 100 million people, PewDiePie can still wrack up a sizable view count, almost regardless of the content of the video.

PewDiePie moved to Japan with his wife in 2022, which also coincided with a shift in his approach to YouTube. Many of his videos are now about his life in Japan with his wife and child, although he still posts about video games on occasion.

PewDiePie certainly hasn't disappeared from the internet the way some former internet celebrities have, but he seems to have settled into a role as an elder statesman of sorts who has moved away from the grind of constantly trying to build up his audience.

PewDiePie's change in approach around 2020 came following a wave of controversies that focused both on the language he had used in his videos and on the behavior of those who followed him. He has worked to clean up his image, and taken several breaks in order to move past the controversies that come in part from being a prolific creator of content.

Now, it seems that he's just trying to live the best version of his life in Japan. In fact, in one recent video, he is bemoaning the proliferation of YouTube content creators in the country (an ironic thing to do given how he makes his living).

Having kids mellows most people out, and that seems to be exactly what happened to PewDiePie. He's still making videos, and they're often about his life, but he doesn't command the same level of attention or drama that he did when he was the biggest name on YouTube, and that's probably a healthy change.