Variety Twitch streamer Félix “xQc” Lengyel finished a 35-hour stream by autoplaying YouTube videos for nine hours while he slept. He kept his camera on and focused on him sleeping the entire time. Before that, he played 45 Overwatch matches over 26 hours.
His number of average viewers was about 20 percent higher than that of any other stream he did over the past seven days, according to Twitch statistics website SullyGnome.
Related: XQc: ‘There will never be a harmony between streaming and playing that I’m comfortable with’
That could mean some people find xQc more entertaining when he’s sleeping than when he’s awake and playing, but that’s unlikely. The fact that xQc was streaming himself sleeping is unusual enough by any Twitch standards to capture the attention of casual viewers and increase his numbers.
XQc rarely streams for over 24 hours. He did so to try to reach top 500 in Overwatch at first, but then he chose to follow that up with his rest.
Just like many other streamers do on Twitch, xQc played YouTube videos with his camera on. Those ranged from original videos made for YouTube to recorded episodes of TV shows. But Twitch forbids creators from “sharing content from other sites” and “showing movies, television shows, or sports matches” without permission from the copyright owners.
There’s a gray area related to copyright infringement and fair use on Twitch when it comes to video reactions, which is when a streamer comments on a video. In xQc’s case, though, it’s hard to say he was reacting at all.
Streaming yourself sleeping also isn’t allowed even if it’s under the IRL category, Twitch’s former PR director Chase told Kotaku in 2018.
But this doesn’t mean Twitch will punish him. The company bans and suspends streamers for copyright infringement when an owner gets in touch with Twitch to take the video or stream down, or when the copyright infringement is as blatant as streaming a film that’s just been released in theaters.
Although nothing will likely happen to xQc due to copyright issues, Twitch may still suspend him for sleeping on stream if it understands this as an unattended behavior.
