A "Minecraft" rivalry for the ages. A legendary catchphrase. A life cut tragically short. Technoblade was a prominent name in the "Minecraft" scene right up until his devastating death in June 2022 — and this is everything you should know about one of the most iconic gamers ever to hit the internet.
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00:00A Minecraft rivalry for the ages, a legendary catchphrase, a life cut tragically short.
00:07Technoblade was a prominent name in the Minecraft scene right up until his devastating death
00:11in June 2022.
00:13And this is everything you should know about one of the most iconic gamers ever to hit
00:18the internet.
00:19No matter how ridiculous the odds may seem, within us resides the power to overcome these
00:23challenges and achieve something beautiful."
00:25Countless streamers have reinvented themselves over the years.
00:28PewDiePie, for instance, was a prolific horror game streamer before he dropped Let's Play
00:32videos in favor of reaction-based content and then returned to more generalized gaming
00:38streams.
00:39But unlike PewDiePie, Technoblade decided to start over from scratch, which may have
00:43been the best decision of his career.
00:46According to Technoblade, he began uploading at the tender age of 10.
00:50His first account was Studio Lore, which consisted of, in his words, terrible Roblox
00:55machinimas.
00:56He eventually moved on to bad Team Fortress 2 videos, again, his words.
01:01But in four years of content creation, he only amassed around 47 subscribers.
01:07Around the time the young content creator was set to graduate middle school, he discovered
01:11streaming and decided to give that a try.
01:14So he ditched his original account and started a few collaborative channels where he made
01:18Minecraft videos with friends.
01:21Those didn't pan out, so he reinvented himself again.
01:25That next attempt, which started in October 2013, resulted in the Technoblade most audiences
01:31know and love.
01:32He had previously prowled small Minecraft PvP servers, but after he created his new identity,
01:38he started visiting Hypixel.
01:41Though Technoblade started from scratch, he made up for it quickly.
01:45After six months, he amassed 300 subscribers.
01:48One year after that, his fanbase had grown to 13,800 followers.
01:53This upward trend persisted throughout Technoblade's career, and now well over 10 million people
01:58are subscribed to his channel.
02:00"...and that's right, you saw the title, I dropped out of college to play Minecraft.
02:04And yes, before you ask, my mother was absolutely thrilled when I told her."
02:08In 2019, Technoblade posted a tell-all video that chronicled his attempt to pursue a higher
02:13education, fittingly titled, I Dropped Out of College to Play Minecraft, LOL.
02:19Several times in the segment, Technoblade stressed that this was a calculated move and
02:23not a spur-of-the-moment decision.
02:25According to Technoblade, he attended college as an English major.
02:29He barely had time to play video games, and received a 4.0 GPA in his second semester.
02:35However, his motivation was anything but healthy.
02:38He only made it through college thanks to, quote, constant deadline anxiety.
02:42To make matters worse, he eventually realized that he only liked non-English curriculum
02:46courses.
02:47When Technoblade crunched the numbers, which factored in his subscriber growth and income,
02:52his calculations demonstrated that an English degree wouldn't pull in as much cash as YouTube.
02:57And so, he concluded that playing Minecraft and posting his videos on YouTube was the
03:01safer option.
03:03He didn't regret going to college for what little time he did, but he also never regretted
03:07his decision to leave it behind.
03:10During a 2016 Q&A, one fan asked how Technoblade's parents reacted to his YouTube career, a pertinent
03:17question, since some Guardians dislike the idea of playing video games for a living.
03:22According to the video, his parents were too preoccupied at the time to respond to his
03:26decision, since they were going through a divorce.
03:29However, he did joke that they were, quote, legally obliged to be, like, competitively
03:34supportive.
03:35But his answer raised another question.
03:37Who was he living with?
03:39Technoblade never addressed this directly, but he may have accidentally provided the
03:43answer.
03:45While playing Minecraft one day, Technoblade paused the game and muted his microphone on
03:49Discord.
03:50Unfortunately, he forgot to do the same on the stream, allowing audiences to hear what
03:55seemed to be a conversation with his dad.
03:57This seemed to reveal that Technoblade lived with his father at the time.
04:01During a later stream, Technoblade and his friends discussed the green screen studio
04:05he used for his 100,000-follow-up plaque reveal.
04:08One person asked why he had a green screen that he used for only one video.
04:13Technoblade explained that his father owns a movie studio, and did offer to let him use
04:16it in the past.
04:18It seems Technoblade finally took his dad up on the offer, to honor that career milestone.
04:23Every now and then, Technoblade mentioned his ADHD to fans, offering musings on how
04:28ADHD can affect the thought process.
04:31In one instance, Technoblade posted on Twitter that, because of his ADHD, he would occasionally
04:36put so much energy into listening to people that he would miss what they actually said.
04:41According to another tweet, Technoblade once somehow went from editing Bedwars footage
04:45to researching King Henry I's rule and lineage, thanks to ADHD.
04:49"...I clearly did not take my ADHD medicine this morning."
04:53While Technoblade typically didn't openly discuss his ADHD, odds are audiences got to
04:58see it in action.
05:00For example, during the fourth round of his legendary fight against Dream, Technoblade
05:04seemingly forgot about his opponent as he sheared the ground for ten seconds.
05:09The streamer attributed this to ADHD, saying that he wanted to raise his shield but was
05:14distracted by what his character did instead.
05:17Turns out he had forgotten to take his medication that morning, but rallied by reminding himself
05:21that he was fighting for $100,000.
05:23Oh, right.
05:25$100,000.
05:26Certain streamers have a catchphrase.
05:28For instance, Jacksepticeye begins some videos with a hearty, top-of-the-morning to ya.
05:33Technoblade had a similar motto, as he could be heard occasionally screaming,
05:37"'Blood for the Blood God.'"
05:38Tabletop wargaming aficionados might recognize the mantra from the Kornite worshippers in
05:43Games Workshop's Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000 products.
05:48In both franchises, Korn is the titular Blood God, and his followers try to spill as much
05:53blood as possible on every battlefield.
05:55The more blood, the better.
05:58"...Blood for the Blood God!
06:00Blood for the Blood God!
06:02Blood for the Blood God!
06:04Blood for the Blood God!
06:06Blood for the Blood God!"
06:07Since Technoblade adopted this motto as one of his catchphrases, surely this must mean
06:11a huge love for the Warhammer games and the armies affiliated with Korn, right?
06:16Not so fast.
06:17According to one member of the Hypixel server forums, Technoblade once said in a video that
06:22he took the phrase from Warhammer 40K, and a Reddit user claimed that the content creator
06:27hadn't even heard of Korn until 2020.
06:30Assuming these statements are true, then Technoblade likely adopted the phrase because he thought
06:34it sounded cool.
06:36To be fair, it is an awesome war cry.
06:38Audiences have seemed split for some time over whether Technoblade or Dream is the superior
06:43Minecraft player.
06:44In the past, Technoblade and Dream have fought for the title and have essentially been rivals,
06:49but like all rivalries, their competition had to start somewhere.
06:53Nobody knows for sure how the rivalry between Technoblade and Dream began, but followers
06:57have pieced together some convincing theories.
07:00One such hypothesis floated by the best ginger revolves around Keemstar.
07:05As the story goes, Keemstar essentially kickstarted the Minecraft competitive scene with Minecraft
07:10Monday.
07:11Technoblade was one of the first entrants and swept the competition.
07:15Gee, Jimmy, it's because they feared my raw power.
07:18While Dream joined the contest on Week 9, he didn't start competing directly with Technoblade
07:23until the sixth Minecraft Championships.
07:25Though neither won, Dream and his team pulled ahead in terms of performance, which might
07:30have started his unofficial rivalry with Technoblade.
07:33Another theory proposed by EvanMCGaming claimed that the Dream vs. Technoblade standoff didn't
07:39develop because of anything either streamer did, but because of their fans.
07:44This might have unintentionally sparked the competition by arguing about who was the better
07:49Minecraft player.
07:50EvanMCGaming believes MrBeast truly set off the discussions, and therefore the feud, when
07:56he collaborated with Dream in one of his first Minecraft videos and joked about Technoblade.
08:01"'Ey, Technoblade more like techno worse than Dreamblade."
08:05YouTube is full of ads, shocking but true.
08:09Some ads are for online services, while others are for mobile games.
08:13If you have visited a dedicated Minecraft YouTuber's channel in the past, you might
08:17have even seen an ad for Technoblade.
08:19When Technoblade was 15 years old, he had accrued around 14,000 subscribers, but like
08:25many content creators, he wanted more.
08:28So he decided to grow his fanbase by churning out content as normal while also attracting
08:32new viewers via ads.
08:35Technoblade made a Google AdWords account and his own trailer, and occasionally funneled
08:39all of his YouTube money into buying ad space in Minecraft videos.
08:43By Technoblade's calculations, his fanbase grew by three subscribers for every dollar
08:48spent on the ads.
08:49He eventually quit due to diminishing returns, but by that time his gamble had paid off.
08:55In 2021, as Technoblade's channel approached the 10 million subscriber milestone, he released
09:00one more ad to, well, ask people to subscribe to his channel.
09:04"'I need you to subscribe to Technoblade today."
09:07It looks like the ploy worked, given the fact that Technoblade's numbers rocketed upwards.
09:12In July 2021, Technoblade's right arm started to hurt.
09:16He thought it was a repetitive strain injury, but rest didn't help.
09:20In fact, his right shoulder swelled up, so Technoblade assumed he had broken a bone.
09:25However, doctors told him that the news was even worse.
09:28He had cancer.
09:30Technoblade joked that he wouldn't mind if doctors had to cut off his arm to get rid
09:33of the tumor, but he had no idea how close it would come to that.
09:37While Technoblade initially went on chemo and radiation therapy to treat the cancer,
09:42it didn't really work.
09:44As a last-ditch effort before surgery, doctors tried to suffocate the tumor by cutting off
09:48its blood supply.
09:50At first, that strategy seemed to work, but then the dying cancer cells ballooned to a
09:55dangerous degree, which forced Technoblade's doctors to schedule an emergency amputation.
10:01However, the surgeons had one final trick up their sleeves.
10:04While they could completely sever Technoblade's arm, they also could try a limb salvage operation
10:09that cut out the tumor and the surrounding muscle and bone.
10:13Technoblade opted for the salvage, since its odds of survival were the same regardless,
10:18and because it let him keep his arm.
10:20Hello everyone, Technoblade here.
10:23If you're watching this, I am dead.
10:25So let's sit down and have one final chat.
10:28On June 30th, 2022, Technoblade's father posted a video to his main channel to tell fans the
10:34horrible news.
10:36Technoblade had passed away.
10:38In his final hours, Technoblade wrote down a message thanking his fans for their support
10:42over the years, particularly following his cancer diagnosis.
10:46He reassured his viewers that he had no regrets, and looked back on his years in the public
10:50eye with great fondness.
10:52If I had another hundred lives, I think I would choose to be Technoblade again every
10:56single time, as those were the happiest years of my life.
11:01Technoblade's family likewise thanked fans and asked for privacy in their time of grief,
11:05and this was met with an outpouring of love from the gaming community.
11:09Major streamers like Pokemon and Ludwig sent their best wishes to Technoblade's family
11:14and shared their appreciation for his content.
11:16Joining in the tributes to Technoblade was none other than Minecraft developer and publisher
11:21Mojang, which also found a way to immortalize a YouTuber in his favorite game.
11:27A few days after Technoblade passed, the launcher for Minecraft Java Edition was updated to
11:32include a crown on the head of the pig on the side of the screen.
11:36Fans immediately recognized this as a shout-out to Technoblade's avatar, and rejoiced at the
11:41sight of this in-game tribute.
11:43The official Minecraft Twitter account also paid its respects to Technoblade, writing,
11:49He meant so much to our community and brought so much joy.
11:53He will be missed dearly.