The well-known Fortnite streamer Daequan Loco wanted to move into a gaming house with colleagues from the e-sports organization NRG. However, the project failed miserably due to poor internet. This resulted in a lack of content and concerned fans.
What happened?
- The Fortnite streamer Daequan Loco (via youtube.com) has returned after a long absence to explain why the NRG eSports content house “Thoom House” was recently abandoned.
- The house was founded in late summer 2021, but suddenly the members went silent.
- The entire project is said to have failed for a single reason that we can painfully relate to in Germany: the lack of a fiber optic connection.
- NRG is based in LA and hosts not only various e-sports teams but also cosplayers and streamers, all coming together under one roof.
E-sports team establishes streaming house that fails due to internet
What caused the project to fail? In this house, the NRG streamers were supposed to create and stream cool content together. However, this plan went terribly wrong. The internet in the NRG house is far too poor to support such a project even in the slightest.
The streamer Daequan Loco reported this upon his return after a long absence.
We arrive at this house, and they (the landlords) tell NRG and us that the internet is extremely fast, that it’s great, that it’s a smart house […]. Long story short: When we got there, it was not that good. We didn’t have a fiber optic connection. I don’t know what it was, probably DSL.
Daequan Loco in the stream on Monday
The streamer continues to talk about the wiring in the house. He mentions a DSL box that looked like an old video recorder. The internet on-site was antiquated, something he hadn’t seen in 15 years. Ironically: For us in Germany, slow internet is still part of everyday life, especially in rural areas, and only a few cities and municipalities can afford to expand the internet or become independent.
In comparison: In the USA, currently about 17% of households are connected to the internet via fiber optics, while around 88% at least have a high-performance cable connection (via broadband.now). In Germany, only 5.4% of households have a fiber optic connection. At least, the average speed in Germany has increased from 60 to almost 98 Mbit/s. That’s about 12 MB download per second, while fiber optics can achieve speeds of up to 10 Gbits (1.25 GB per second) (via winfuture.de).
Similar to what is common here, Daequan would have had to convince the entire street, including neighbors, and cover the costs for laying the fiber optic cable. Daequan Loco also explains this in the stream:
We asked the owners if we could get fiber optics. They said that was possible, but we had to involve the entire street. We couldn’t do anything about the slow internet. I wanted to upload a video, and it said it would take 256 hours. We couldn’t even stream music.
Could NRG have saved the project?
The question of blame is clear for the streamer: NRG could not have done anything; the organizers were just as lied to as the streamers themselves. However, since the house had already been prepaid, NRG considered how to save the streaming house project.
One idea was to improve the internet using IRL streaming backpacks that get their network via radio. But besides the high cost of about €8,000 each, the capacity would still not be sufficient even with multiple backpacks.
In the end, the team pressed the off switch not just because of the bad internet, says streamer Daequan Loco. There were too many other problems to want to continue:
- Showers only provided cold water for 4 months
- The air conditioning in the house could not be controlled
- The pool was broken
- and various smaller problems with windows, furniture, and more.
For a smart home, the house was pretty dumb, the streamer concludes. Daequan and the other NRG streamers are now returning to regular content. After all, they were missing for a whole four months due to the failed streaming project.
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