| “ | Let's Plays with heart | ” |
―Gronkh | ||
Erik Range (born: April 10, 1977) known on YouTube as Gronkh is a German "Let's Player", TV presenter, Streamer, Voice-actor and Managing Partner of his co-founded enterprises PlayMassive Ltd. [2009 - 2018] and Gods of Gaming Ltd. [2018 - present]. In 2018 Gronkh left PlayMassive Ltd. and founded Gods of Gaming Ltd. in Cologne. Range is the most famous and influental Gaming-YouTuber and "Let's Player" in the German-speaking community on YouTube and is widely regarded as "King of Gaming". Besides his work doing playthroughs, he is also known for his vlogging on the Channel Superhomies, with his friend Sarazar, the website gaming show "Last Man Standing" (part one and two) with other YouTubers, which is presented by MyVideo.de, and the charity events Friendly Fire 1, Friendly Fire 2, Friendly Fire 3, Friendly Fire 4, Friendly Fire 5, Friendly Fire 6 and Friendly Fire 7. On December 3rd, 2022, Friendly Fire 8 will be streamed live on several different twitch.tv channels.
Gronkh is also known for his philanthropy, having raised / helped-to-raise over 8 Million € for charitable organizations. He is a five-time "Web-Videopreis" winner, which is the highest award for Web-Video producers in Germany. In 2020, he was also named "Best Streamer" at GamesCom and is a member of the Computergaming Hall of Fame alongside his long-time friend, Sarazar.
His playthrough of Minecraft, which went on to gather over 1.700 episodes [2010 - 2017], still remains as one of the most viewed playthroughs in YouTube-history.
While his mainstay is still YouTube with daily uploads for over 12 years, Gronkh's focus has been shifting towards the streaming service twitch.tv since 2018. Nowadays his YouTube views have deteriorated and his channel is frequently used for uploads of videos from his stream, which are cut into episodes, and for Let's Plays of mainly small Indie games as well as AAA games he is interested in. However, he still maintains a very loyal following of several hundreds-of-thousands of people and, even after over a decade, still gets around 1.500.000 views per day on YouTube.
Personal life[]
Erik Range was born in the city of Brunswick in Lower Saxony, Germany on April 10th, 1977. He was first known in the gaming scene as Gronkh, when he was active as a Guide for minstrel characters for the online RPG Meridian 59. His nickname Gronkh, was explained jocularly by himself as a portmanteau of the fictional name Gregor Onkh. With his friend and associate Valentin Rahmel (alias Sarazar) from Cologne he founded the Playmassive Ltd, which contains a couple of websites about gaming news. Since 2010 Erik releases Let's Plays to many games, just like: Minecraft, DragonAge, GTA V and much more. His gameplays usually have quite the effect on the developers of the games he is playing. Especially Indie-Game studios keep reporting about spurts in sales numbers after Gronkh has publically played their games. One of said games is the critically acclaimed "Edna & Harvey: The Breakout" or "Edna bricht aus" as it is called in German. Range is currently residing in the Cologne-area and has been for the last 11 years.
Minecraft Let's Play[]
Range's most well known project was his Let's Play of Minecraft. It was started in October of 2010 and continued, with several breaks, until May of 2017. However, Range has never stated that he will permanently stop playing the game and might return in the future. Both strings of Minecraft Let's Plays, Vanilla Minecraft [2010 - 2014] and Life in the Woods: After Humans [2016 - 2017], have garnered a combined 1 Billion+ views and are among the longest-lasting and most viewed projects in YouTube history. In the later stages of his "Life in the Woods: After Humans" run of Minecraft, Gronkh played together with fellow YouTubers TobinatorLP and Pandorya. As of November 2022, no further news to the continuation of Minecraft have been given by Range. The project is officially listed as "paused".
Let's Play Together[]
LPT on MyVideo.de[]
On May 18th, 2012 Range [Gronkh] and Rahmel [Sarazar] started a liveshow for computer games. Their show "Let's Play Together" ran from mid-2012 until November 2014, when both Range and Rahmel left their then-parent company and joined studio71, a subsidiary of German TV channel ProSieben. LPT however went on to be moderated and hosted by David Hain and Florian Siegismund and had another run from March to November 2015. In late-2015 it was announced that there would be no further episodes in production and that the series is ended. In total, there were 132 episodes of about 1 hour length each. One-hundred of those were hosted by Range and Rahmel, thirty-two of them by Hain and Siegismund. At times, the live-streams were watched by over 100.000 people concurrently and went on to be among the most watched live-streams of the 2010s.
LPT XXL[]
This Event was part of the GamesCom 2013 in Cologne, where Gronkh, Sgt. Rumpel and Sarazar were playing games together with some chosen Fans, performing their single "Elektrotitte" [1] and entertaining the 4,000 appeared guests. As musical support the band Donots and the Group DieAlchimisten appeared. There was also a trailer shown for the Last Man Standing 2 [2] event.
Last Man Standing Events[]
On March 14, 2013 two teams competed against each other in an eight hour lasting livestream, that was watched by over 1 Million viewers. The both teams were: Team Let's Play Together (Gronk and Sarazar) and Team HardReset (PietSmiet). In each team were six competitors, who challenged each other in many games. It ended as a draw (3:3). On November 30, last year, the LMS 2 was again streamed live on MyVideo, again with Team LPT and Team HardReset.
Famous Let's Plays and Projects [apart from Minecraft][]
- GTA V & GTA: Online [3]
One of the most watched Let's Plays on Range's channel remains to be his 200+ episode run of GTA V and GTA: Online. His walkthrough of the main-story of Grand Theft Auto 5 was co-moderated by Rahmel and lasted just over 100 episodes. After a short break, Range, Rahmel and several other well-known YouTubers began their "GTA: Online" project, which spanned over several months between 2013 and 2014 or 132 episodes. Over time, more and more YouTubers joined in, among them later members of Howaizen Squad [HWSQ] HerrCurrywurst, Pandorya and TobinatorLP.
2. Starbound [4]
Starbound is mostly a mix of RPG and Adventure and takes place in the space. Gronkh was playing this game with TobinatorLP since December 2013 and ended it with episode #106 on March 16, 2014
3. HWSQ
The Howaizen Squad or abbreviated "HWSQ" was a gaming-group which consisted of Gronkh, TobinatorLP, HerrCurrywurst and Pandorya, all of which, apart from Pandorya, who was already in a relationship with Range since 2012, came to know eachother on GTA: Online. The concept behind this format was small, usually 5-6 episode spanning, runs of different video-games. In their 3-season-run from 2016 to 2019, 49 games were played in 535 episodes. Among those games were Gary's Mod and Dead by Daylight, as well as Browsergames such as scribbl.io and Cards against Humanity.
In July 2019 the format was abruptly ended because of a scandal concerning HerrCurrywurst and his actions in real life. However, later that year, another gaming-group was founded, this time without HerrCurrywurst. Their name M.E.T.T is a wordplay on the initials of its members:
- Maximilian [PhunkRoyale], Michael [Kapuzenwurm], Erik [Gronkh], Tatjana [Pandorya] and Tobias [TobinatorLP]
As well as on the central-european dish of Mettbrötchen, which is basically raw, heavily seasoned minced meat and onions on bread.
Awards[]
- Webvideopreis 2012: "Let's Play of the Year" [with YTITTY], "Web-Video of the Year" [with YTITTY] and "Jury-Award of the Year" [with Rahmschnitzel]
- Computerspiele Hall-of-Fame: Inducted in 2014 alongside Sarazar [Valentin Rahmel]
- Golden YouTube-Playbutton: 4x [2013, 2014, 2016, 2017]
- Webvideopreis 2014: "Let's Play of the Year" for his 1000th episode of Minecraft
- Webvideopreis 2015: "Honorary Award of the Year" for his philanthropic efforts and raising over 25.000€ for the victims of the land-slide in Nepal, as well as for being the "first Let's Player in Germany and a landmark in German Web-Video-entertainment history".
- GamesCom 2020: "Best Streamer" for his success on Twitch.tv.
Trivia[]
- He is of Russian and German descent, however of German nationality
- Is in an active relationship with fellow YouTuber Pandorya [Tatjana Werth] since 2012, which he made public on his 39th birthday in 2016.
- Says "I'm almost 12" for over a decade now.
- Is one of Germany's first Let's Players and overall one of the first content creators of that genre, having created his channel in 2006 and having at least one video-upload per day since 2010.
- Range has a very humble, generous and kind personality and is very fond of animals.
- He is 1,90m [6'3] tall and is sometimes called "Giant"
- Finished an apprenticeship as a Computer Scientist but only worked in his profession briefly before becoming a Games-Journalist and later a YouTuber.
- Lived in Brunswick, Kiel, Berlin and Cologne.
- Him and his girlfriend of a decade, Pandorya, both love Japan and the Japanese Culture and have visited the country on several occasions.
Websites[]
Besides the Playmassive Ltd. website, [5]there is also a GronkhDE network, [6]a Gronkh-Wiki[7] and a aggregator for all content and activities relating to Gronkh [8].