Ludwig loses over 100 hours of Elden Ring YouTube VODs

On Feb. 24, popular YouTube streamer, and proud owner of a life-sized Jackie Chan statue, Ludwig Ahgren went live and didn’t stop streaming until he beat FromSoftware’s newest Soulsborne title, “Elden Ring.”

That would be a daunting challenge for any gamer, but on Tuesday, Ludwig finally beat Elden Ring after over 60 hours of playtime in-game. Now, after over 700 deaths and plenty of funny moments, more than 100 hours of VOD footage from Ludwig’s Elden Ring stream have been lost forever on YouTube.

“The way it works on YouTube is you’re allowed to stream any amount of hours you want,” Ludwig said in his latest Mogul Mail video. “But if the VOD goes about 12 hours, then it won’t be saved. My VOD was 102 hours so none of it was saved.”

Ludwig was aware of this rule, but planned ahead by setting up local recording software to capture a backup of the VODs. Unfortunately, that local recording failed while he was live because he ran out of storage space for such a large VOD. The only VODs he was able to salvage from the run were from the very beginning of his play-through and the last couple hours of his run. This was enough to see the final boss fight.

“I did know that that’s how YouTube works, but it’s just a little bit of a bummer,” Ludwig said in the video. “I was really excited for this. It was my most-viewed video ever. My most-viewed video before was salty Ice Climber moments, and this stream got over 4 million views.” 

The sad truth is that there’s probably no way for Ludwig to recover the lost VODs from YouTube. At the end of Ludwig’s Mogul Mail video, titled “YouTube Failed Me,” he put out a call to action for any fans that might happen to have their own recordings of certain parts of the stream. If enough people come through with a decent amount of backup footage, he said, he’ll try to piece it all together in hopes of recovering his play-through.