Why did PewDiePie semi-retire from YouTube? Decline in posting frequency explored

MrBeast may be the first YouTube content creator to cross the 200 million subscriber mark, but the Swedish-born Felix Arvid Ulf Kjellberg, aka PewDiePie, was the reigning king of the platform for most of the last decade. From 2013 to November 2022, Felix was the most-subscribed non-corporate YouTuber. However, over the last couple of years, his frequency of new videos has fallen drastically.

PewDiePie's channel has essentially stagnated, remaining at the 111 million subscriber mark for over a year, with videos uploaded every week rather than his old pattern of posting daily videos. Even before becoming a father to baby Bjorn, PewDiePie had expressed reasons for the radical change in his content creation strategy, which some may call semi-retirement, stating that he is no longer motivated to upload videos to grow his channel and would rather focus on doing things at a more leisurely pace.

In a YouTube video titled Why I didnt quit uploaded in September of 2022, Felix detailed his thought process about choosing not to retire completely but rather to cut back on video production in a way that suits his changed mentality.

Since moving to Japan in 2022, PewDiePie started uploading many vlog-style videos on his channel in contrast to his usual reaction and gaming content. After all, he had started as a Let's Play channel back in 2011, going viral for his over-the-top commentaries on horror games.

During the iconic subscriber battle with T-Series, the Swede took a very aggressive approach to YouTube, uploading a ten-minute-long video almost every day while urging viewers to subscribe. While he ultimately lost the battle, his channel saw amazing growth during those days. However, as seen in the aforementioned graph, his channel