Have you been on YouTube or TikTok lately and wondered who the likable gentleman with the deep voice is that keeps popping up in your feed? If so, you’re not alone, as the Twitch streamer Jason “Pirate Software” Hall is simply everywhere right now. MeinMMO explains why.
What kind of streamer is he? Jason Thor Hall is a software developer with a remarkable career background. He has worked for Blizzard and Amazon and has been a specialist in cyber security. He is now an indie developer with his own studio, Pirate Software, and streams under this name on Twitch.
On the streaming platform, Hall mainly entertains his viewers with anecdotes from his career, insights into his work as a developer, and a game or two. However, despite Pirate Software regularly streaming since August 2017, his channel has only exploded in the last few months. The secret to his sudden success is reportedly a single checkbox.
Clips, short excerpts from streams, can take on a life of their own outside of Twitch when ripped out of context. However, Pirate Software knows how to cleverly utilize these short snippets.
Streamer cracks the algorithm with YouTube Shorts
What is the secret to his success? Pirate Software attributes the explosive growth of his channel to YouTube Shorts. These are the short videos with which YouTube launched its own version of TikTok in 2020. Hall has been posting excerpts of his streams there for a while, but it was apparently an inconspicuous trick that helped him break through.
When you post a video via YouTube Shorts, you have the option to notify all your subscribers about the upload. What seems like a good option actually harms, according to Hall. Many subscribers eventually become inactive and no longer interact with the videos.
Hall suspects that in this case, YouTube registers a lack of interest and shows the videos less. His “secret” is therefore not checking that box. This way, his Shorts are suggested to active users. When they interact with the content, the videos are suggested to more and more viewers.
Here you can see how the streamer explains his trick:
Pirate Software just makes good videos
What sets him apart? Of course, it’s not enough that the videos are omnipresent – the content must also capture the viewers’ attention. Fortunately, Pirate Software has no problem with that:
- Hall provides exciting insights behind the scenes of the gaming industry,
- shares his own experiences and also critically addresses his former employers
- and just has some really cool stories to tell: His father is said to have been the legendary MMORPG nerd from South Park.
Moreover, the streamer shares the development process of his upcoming game Heartbound with his viewers and creates informative content on topics like software development and data security. This has drawn the attention of well-known content creators like Destiny and Asmongold to the former Blizzard employee:
Another significant aspect is likely the high recognition value of Pirate Software’s videos. The Shorts have a uniform visual style, and Hall always illustrates his points in Paint.
It seems that the concept of Pirate Software is working: In the comments under his Shorts and TikToks, as well as in discussions on Reddit, you often read: Who is this guy and why do I suddenly keep seeing him in my feed? But how does it actually look in numbers?
A long way ahead
This is how successful Pirate Software is: On YouTube, the channel Pirate Software currently has 1.3 million subscribers and more than 540 million views. Most of these subscribers were gained by the content creator since November 2023 when he started using his Shorts strategy. Pirate Software began the month with about 19,000 subscribers – by November 11, he already had 343,000 subscribers. By early December, the channel reached 814,000 subscribers (via SocialBlade, as of February 14, 2024).
In one month, Pirate Software gained almost 800,000 new subscribers on YouTube, representing a growth of nearly 4,200%. Since then, he has steadily gained new viewers. His Shorts have garnered several million views. Hall was also able to benefit from this viral success on Twitch:
In October 2023, Hall streamed to an average of 379 viewers; by November, that number rose to 2,808, and now Pirate Software averages more than 8,500 viewers at the same time (via TwitchTracker, as of February 14, 2023).
In the past 3 months, Pirate Software has gained 1,036% in viewers (via SullyGnome). With the viewers, the number of subs has also climbed, and thus Pirate Software broke the Hypetrain world record multiple times in December 2023.
Hall also proves that his success does not have the short-lived nature typically associated with viral fame. Rather, he has transformed the boost from YouTube into sustained growth.
In particular, TikTok has proven to be a kind of springboard that allows content creators to significantly boost their Twitch channels:
The success of Pirate Software also highlights what many streamers have been criticizing about Twitch for some time: growing “naturally” on the streaming platform is incredibly difficult. It seems that you first need to build a community on another platform to be able to succeed on Twitch.
This likely has to do with how the different platforms operate and present new content to their users. However, once you have a significant reach on Twitch, the platform pays off doubly. This may be one of the reasons why big YouTubers are now moving to Twitch.
