Days After Leaving Twitch for YouTube, Ludwig Has Been Suspended from the Site

When popular streamer Ludwig Ahgren announced that he had signed an exclusive deal with YouTube and would be moving his hugely popular streams over to the platform, it initially seemed like a huge win for both Ludwig and YouTube. Just days after Ludwig made the switch though, the partnership is already encountering problems as Ludwig's account has been suspended from YouTube.

Mid-way through Ludwig's broadcast on Dec. 2, he was hit with an account suspension. The suspension means that, while his account is still accessible, he can no longer go live. Ludwig has already joked about his suspension on Twitter, writing “you could say the switch has been going well," over an image saying his stream is unavailable.

More than 20,000 people were watching Ludwig's stream when his suspension came through, and his first stream was watched by more than 600,000 people. He's already amassed more than 2 million subscribers on YouTube as well. At the time of his suspension, Ludwig was watching and commenting on other YouTube videos, and interacting with the comments that his viewers were leaving for him.

Ludwig's account was suspended because of "policy violations," although it was initially unclear what the specific violations were. Many fans suspect that Ludwig was in violation of YouTube's DMCA rules when he played several videos from Cocomelon and Pinkfong, including the ultra-popular "Baby Shark." DMCA rules protect the copyright holder from having their content shown in a venue outside of their control.

Following that speculation, Ludwig has explained that that is precisely why he was banned.

“Only two days on YouTube and I got banned from streaming,” he said. “What happened was I was trying to look at the top fifty greatest vintage YouTube videos. Along the way, I ended up listening to a few seconds of 'Baby Shark,' which … I won’t dare listen to again."

“I’m pretty sure the corporate overlords that own 'Baby Shark' have an iron fist on YouTube, and so they took me down. Not in this car," he continued.

“Okay, it looks like DMCA may be a little more of a concern than I originally had imagined. I thought what would happen is because of YouTube’s robust content ID system, they’d flag it, take the monetization from the stream. 'Baby Shark' doesn’t work like that though.”

“It is crazy,” he concluded. “In four years on Twitch, I never got banned.”

Ludwig did not offer any insight into when his suspension may end, although it seems like he'll need to be much more careful about the types of content he shares in his streams moving forward.

His deal with YouTube may have seemed like a profitable idea when he started, but Ludwig is going to have to adjust the types of videos he makes in order to fit the rules of his new platform. He's not going to be banned forever, but this early suspension suggests that Ludwig's videos may have to shift moving forward.