Twitch dropped a few big changes to the Hype Train feature on its website on March 27, including a new reward that would cost upwards of six figures to get. And now, less than a week later, PirateSoftware has broken the platform’s high-level Hype Train record and reached that potentially unobtainable goal.
On April 1, PirateSoftware founder Jason Thor Hall streamed what was originally him working on fake patch notes for the studio’s game, Heartbound, and some Helldivers 2. At the 12-hour mark of the stream, however, things changed as a Hype Train not only started but instantly jumped to level 15.
This was the start of a community-organized effort to break the Twitch Hype Train record, which Thor previously held in December—though he claimed it was set at level 69 and not his own 55 record. Regardless, within 20 minutes the stream had swapped to focusing solely on the text-to-speech comments and a fight against the time as the PirateSoftware Hype Train had reached level 50, and it took less than an hour to break the record and reach level 70.
While we don’t know the exact numbers yet for what it takes to reach level 100 on the Twitch Hype Train, it has been speculated it would take around $500,000 in Bits, Subs, and other support events. There were plenty of times along the journey where it looked like progress was slowing down and the KappaInfinite global emote unlock was out of reach. But the goblins prevailed in the end.
After roughly 15 hours, 54,380 gifted subs, 8,225,386 Bits, and more support from the community, PirateSoftware set the new Hype Train record at level 106, becoming the first streamer and community to unlock the new KappaInifinite emote—all while wearing a banana costume.
As a result of the sheer number of donations and subscriptions, the support TTS had a queue of over 300 messages for hours and the Hype Train hit Twitch so hard it caused delays in on-site visual displays and Thor’s stream API to track the levels. Almost 30 minutes after hitting level 100, the tracker still thought the Hype Train was going on and KappaInfinite emotes were still being rolled out to supporters slowly to keep the website from going down.
“I grew up on the internet when everyone had a silly website for their cat. It was a place of absurdity and pure creativity good or bad. The Wild West. Now we’re locked into the megacities of social media platforms and so many of you are afraid to break out and MAKE something for fear of rejection, ridicule, or hate,” Thor said. “Don’t be afraid. Go make things. It’s time to believe in yourself again. I can’t wait to see what you do.”
