By Lauren Gudknecht
Sports Editor
Brett DaCosta, a sophomore here at KU, has found an interest in playing video games with friends online and is a member of the Rocket League team here at KU. He has also decided to take on streaming as a hobby. Most recently, he decided to use his hobby to help raise money for charity and ended up raising $2,000 for St. Judes.
Twitch streamers can raise money through donations of bits, which is a currency on Twitch that can be given to the streamers directly. Through subathons, viewers can donate, subscribe and give subs to add time to the stream, making the players stream until time runs out.
“After hitting the 100 subscriber mark, which is extremely difficult as a small streamer, I decided to do what Ludwig, another streamer, was doing,” stated DaCosta.
Little did DaCosta know that he would be streaming for 12 days straight. DaCosta said in an interview, “The revenue from the stream will be donated to St. Judes research for children with cancer and other diseases.”
By the end of the first day of streaming, DaCosta already had 78 hours on the timer and knew this was not going to be what he had expected. “I was blessed to be able to have amazing support from the Rocket League team and the community itself on Twitch who supported me the entire 12 days being there all day and night,” said DaCosta.
DaCosta spoke about the most memorable moment during the stream when he was raided by HIKO, a professional Valorant player on the team of 100Thieves. DaCosta said, “A raid is when a channel sends all their viewers to another channel to give them support.” This raid brought over 12,000 viewers and many of the individuals ended up supporting him days after the raid.
“Being live for 12 days is extremely difficult especially when you are on stream 24/7 all while trying to go to class and get homework done,” DaCosta said. DaCosta was lucky enough to have his roommate and people on campus help him out whenever possible, getting him food and even taking over the stream while he attended class or took exams.
In the end, DaCosta created many relationships in the Twitch community and not only helped his stream grow, but it put him in the top 0.01% of Twitch and ranked him just under 25,000 in the world on the streaming platform. “I am excited for what the future holds for the channel and all of us involved,” said DaCosta.
Those interested can check out his channel at Twitch.tv/bredac.
