Twitch star Kai Cenat is taking credit for singer The Weeknd’s resurgence of interest in Elden Ring, thanks to his week-long live stream that took over the internet.
Kai Cenat is one of the most popular streamers on Twitch, topping viewership on the site for a week in May 2024 as fans poured in to watch him play FromSoftware’s Elden Ring.
The influencer wouldn’t stop streaming until he beat the notoriously difficult game… and after 166 hours and over 1,700 deaths, he finally finished his quest.
Kai’s marathon broadcast became a massive cultural moment for the internet, and has even resulted in a resurgence of popularity for Elden Ring, with the likes of xQc following suit and starting his own stream playing through the game.
He’s not the only one who’s picked it back up, either; Kai Cenat revealed that music artist The Weeknd has also started playing the game again thanks to his viral stream.
“He literally said, ‘I put down Elden Ring two years ago, and because of you playing it, you made me pick it back up, and now I gotta get ready for the DLC,’” Kai claimed in a May broadcast, recounting a conversation he had with the artist over text.
“I said bro, you better hurry up and level up,” he continued. “This is crazy!”
It’s no surprise that Kai’s stream got the attention of one of America’s biggest artists; the streamer boasts a slew of high-profile connections with names in the music biz, and has featured a few top performers on his channel in the past.
From Nicki Minaj to Offset and even Blueface, Kai’s got friends in high places, and was even name-dropped in one of Drake’s diss tracks during his famous feud with Kendrick Lamar.
With Elden Ring’s first DLC on the horizon, Kai’s stream couldn’t come at a better time for fans of the 2022 Game of the Year… but his next broadcast is shaping up to be even bigger.
In fact, the streamer said that he’s planning a Hunger Games-style competition with 50 of the net’s top influencers, eyeing MrBeast as one of his top contenders.
“I want drones, I want combat suits…this has to be huge,” Kai said, leaving fans excited for the upcoming project that will undoubtedly draw another massive audience as he continues his reign as the undisputed king of Twitch.