Pewdiepie Stops Playing Video Games, Will Stop Uploading Gaming Content to Focus on Fatherhood and Other Hobbies

PewDiePie, once the biggest gaming YouTuber of all time, is moving on from gaming. The 110+ million sub YouTuber wants to spend more of his time in exploring other hobbies.
He’s not quitting YouTube, but for now, his videos will have nothing to do with gaming.
Per PCGamer, PewDiePie explains:

“Since becoming a dad [to Bjorn], everything does get evaluated differently. Every hour has weight now in a way it didn’t before. One of the biggest things I decided to drop was videogames. But here’s the thing: if I really wanted to, there’d be plenty of time for me to play videogames. I’ve just decided that, if time is limited, I’d rather be doing something else.”

He’s not taking gaming out completely off of his life. He still plays 30-minute sessions sometimes. But rather than logging in dozens of hours into one game anymore, he is instead putting his free time into growing himself. As he had spent so much of his life gaming and being a content creator, he had not spent much time into building himself up. Some of these efforts have been documented in his own channel.

For example, in “STOP. Using AI Right now“, PewDiepie discussed his creating a custom PC (10 GPUs) for his own self-hosted AI model, building his own web UI named “ChatOS” to run on it, and his efforts in creating a chatbot that is efficient and cheap.

Another video titled “I’m Done with Google“, PewDiePie was able to demonstrate how a person could completely decouple themselves from the Google ecosystem and opt instead for more open source and private alternatives.

This is not a sudden decision. On January 14, 2017, he released a video titled “WHY I DON’T PLAY VIDEO GAMES ANYMORE..“, saying he had gotten tired of fake positivity, that he wasn’t even playing games for himself anymore, and that YouTube was limiting his creativity. Within the following years, he started transitioning to reaction videos and meme reviews, before pivoting to mostly vlogs showcasing his family life in Japan.

Since the announcement, many of PewDiePie’s longtime fans have shown support and understanding. Many say that he “won”, having been able to transition from a harsh YouTube grind to happy times with his family. What’s good about all this is that this isn’t the end of PewDiePie, but a move to a different chapter where YouTube is not his priority, but his own life.