Photon-Terrasteel Sub War

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Photon and Terrasteel have been in a semi-mutual subscriber battle starting on the 30th of April, 2019 and ending on February 23, 2021.

## Overview

The war was mutually declared beginning April 30, 2019. At the time, Photon had 58 subscribers and Terrasteel had 64 subscribers. Photon had 5,800 views and Terrasteel had 18,150 views.

## Chronology

**The Early Days (April 30th, 2019 - June 17th, 2019)**

The war was uneventful for the majority of the beginning months leading up to June 2019. Terrasteel leaded Photon in both views and subscribers up to May 28, 2019. Photon's video *Calamity Lore Animated - Astrum Aureus* was recommended to people following the release of DM Dokuro's three tracks *The Heaven-Sent Abomination, Treasures Within The Abomination,* and *Interstellar Stomper* three days prior.

This immediately led to Photon matching and subsequently surpassing Terrasteel in subscribers, reaching a peak subgap of +3 (88 vs. 85) on the 31st of May.

However, a sudden spike in Terrasteel's subscriber growth regained the throne on the 2nd of June, immediately regaining a subscriber gap of -3 (87 vs 91) that day. This was likely due to Terrasteel's extensive *redditization* *(promoting work on r/terraria)* that day, as well as Photon losing subscribers.

**100 Subscribers (June 18th, 2019 - June 22nd, 2019)**

This lead would sustain for another 16 days, when Photon once again matched Terrasteel on the 18th of June at 98 subscribers. Terrasteel passed to 99 subscribers the next day and Photon matched.

According to Terrasteel, he reached 100 subscribers on June 21st, 2019 when Photon had 99 subscribers. However, a subscriber was quickly lost and Photon officially reached 100 subscribers on June 22nd, 2019 (verified by Socialblade). He also received the email from YouTube 6 hours prior to Terrasteel. Due to this, Photon is **officially** the first channel to reach 100 subscribers.

**The CLA Days (June 23rd, 2019 - August 30th, 2019)**

Photon proceeded to continue in a subscriber lead throughout the summer of 2019.

Terrasteel's future semiviral videos *Calamity Revengance - All Boss Drops, A Guide to Stoneskipping,* and *Terraria Complete History* were published during this period, though they would not gain traction for another year. *A Guide to Stoneskipping Part 1* was also featured in the Terraria Discord content showcase after Terrasteel allegedly nagged the moderators several times. He was the smallest creator to do so at the time (125 subscribers).

Photon, like Terrasteel, did not gain major growth during this period. He published mostly his flagship series at the time, *Calamity Lore Animated*, which would gain a few hundred views per video after publishing to r/terraria or r/calamitymod.

**Advertising (August 31st, 2019 - September 15th, 2019)**

After watching Technoblade's video *The History of Technoblade (1,000,000 sub elbow reveal),* Terrasteel was compelled to run advertising as Technoblade did.

Terrasteel began to purchase Google AdWords for his channel on August 31st, 2019, focusing on *Terraria Complete History* and *Hardmode Guns in a Nutshell*. The ad campaign cost $100 ($75 after credit) and brought Terrasteel firmly back into the lead in subscribers, bringing him from 201 subscribers to 374 subscribers. However, Terrasteel was not able to reach 200 subscribers first. Photon **officially** reached 200 first.

Photon did the same, mainly focusing on *Calamity Lore Animated - The Slime God.* However, due to his inferior conversion rate, he only went from 204 to 315 subscribers.

Both sides gained about 10,000 views from the advertising. Both campaigns stopped on the 8th and 15th of September respectively.

**The Great Stagnation (September 16th, 2019 - February 29th, 2020)**

Terrasteel would enter into a hiatus for several months after publishing *Ammunition in a Nutshell* on September 15.

Photon would also enter into a hiatus until uploading *Pre-Hardmode in under 40 seconds*, the first installation in *"In X Seconds"*, Photon's flagship series that continues to this day. This video is also considered to be Photon's first masterpiece and semiviral video.

Photon would intermittently upload *Calamity Lore Animated* episodes every month or so, along with a short video based on the Calamity mod called *Yharim burns the ocean*. Notably, Terrasteel found it quite funny.

Photon would slowly inch toward Terrasteel in subgap until the 13th of December, where he passed Terrasteel. His lead was solid for many months after.

**Terrasteel's Explosion (March 1st, 2020 - April 27th, 2020)**

They both lay stagnant until Terrasteel suddenly gained favor in the algorithm. On the 2nd of March, Terrasteel randomly passed Photon in subscribers (610 to 612). They slowly drifted away in subscriber count as Terrasteel's daily views began to climb.

By the 5th of April, Terrasteel's growth was several times Photon's, prompting him to upload *Hardmode Staves in a Nutshell.* He was criticized for using the word "staves", which apparently no one understood was a plural of "staff". Regardless, his accelerating view count led him to beat Photon **officially** to 1,000 subscribers on the night of the 12th of April. Terrasteel was approved for monetization via YPP nine days later on the 21st of April.

Terrasteel then released his most explosive video yet, *Hardmode Swords in a Nutshell*. It reached over 20,000 views on the first day and peaked at 3rd on the YouTube keyword *terraria*. This gained him even more favor in the algorithm, causing him to gain hundreds of subscribers per day up until the 27th of April. Photon was known to be jealous of Terrasteel's spontaneous growth, despite him uploading much more frequently.

Photon continued to produce *Calamity Lore Animated* and did not experience significant growth at the time.

**Terraria: Journey's End (April 28th, 2020 - July 1st, 2020)**

Terrasteel was playing Bedwars with his friends **Crixmson, Photon,** and **mechadoge** at the time when he attained 26 CPS while in the forge. This was due to a mouse defect that caused many double clicks. This also prompted the Watchdog anticheat to ban him for 30 days. Terrasteel was subsequently depressed for a few days doing nothing but watching *Dragonhearted* by CaptainSparklez on repeat.

Due to this lack of uploading, Terrasteel's growth began to stagnate, only gaining 100-200 subscribers per day, under half of what it was.

However, the Terraria update 1.4, also known as Journey's End, dropped on May 16th, causing huge traction to the Terraria community. The update rekindled Terrasteel's channel, causing him to publish *Zenith in a Nutshell, 1.4 Items in a Nutshell*, and a playthrough, which gained moderate success. The playthrough and item video have since been unlisted.

As for Photon, he uploaded *Fighting the Blood Nautilus*, his prediction for the Dreadnautilius fight within the new update, as teased in the trailer. Photon has said this was his first "good" animation, and it was also the first which performed well, gaining several thousand views in the first few days. Photon began to once again rival Terrasteel, though at this time Terrasteel still had a lead of 5,000 subscribers (1.5K to 6.6K). Notably, he got most things in the video right, though they did change the name to "Dreadnautilus" upon release much to Photon's shagrin. On the 13th of May, the Pheton Discord was also created, and Terrasteel is its oldest remaining member.

When May 27th rolled around, Terrasteel once again was able to play on Hypixel. It is here where he developed a crippling addiction to Hypixel Skyblock, where he would soon become a leaderboard player and billionaire. This stopped him from uploading much, even less than Photon.

However, Terrasteel's growth was still constant and he gained about 20,000 views per day, though it was slowly declining day-by-day due to inactivity.

**The Race to Ten Thousand (July 2nd, 2020 - July 30th, 2020)**

Photon was still 4,000 subscribers behind Terrasteel at this time (5K vs 9.2K), but that was about to change. He unleashed his flagship video, which is his 2nd most popular video to this day with 1.4M views. This video was *Hardmode in 64 Seconds,* which destroyed Terrasteel's explosive *Hardmode Swords in a Nutshell* in explosivity. It instantly made Photon's growth many times faster than Terrasteel's, setting him on a path of collision.

Photon was thrilled, and he released *Calamity in 117 Seconds* (his most time-consuming video) on the 19th. Though this was not as explosive as its predecessor, it was still great for channel growth. On the 26th of July, Photon passed Terrasteel at 9.83K subscribers. Terrasteel then asked for subscribers via a community post in an attempt to make it to 10,000 subscribers first. However, at this point, Terrasteel's growth was utterly stagnant and Photon was poised to beat him easily due to his growth being several times faster.

Terrasteel uploaded for the final time on the 26th, creating *Death Messages in a Nutshell*.

However, Photon beat Terrasteel by 10 subscribers to the finish line on the night of the 29th. This makes him the **official** winner of the race to 10,000. Terrasteel crossed the line shortly after. Photon celebrated the victory by releasing his first Minecraft video, *Villager Breeder Hijinks*, on the 30th, as well as making a community post.

**The Photon Era (August 1st, 2020 - Present)**

Photon continued to actively upload within the summer, rapidly increasing his growth. **Terrasteel conceded his defeat privately to Photon on the 19th of August**, though this was not official. At that time, Terrasteel was 2,000 subscribers behind Photon.

Bombshell semiviral videos such as *Zenith in 89 Seconds* (his current most popular video at 1.5M views) as well as the rest of the *In X Seconds* family sustained his growth. By the beginning of the school year, Photon was 20,000+ subscribers in the lead to Terrasteel, who had achieved barely any growth at all.

Photon then met Adventurer32 sometime in August or September, and they would soon collaborate on the *Failing at For the Worthy with Adventurer32 and Terrasteel* series of streams and videos. The first few streams and playsessions were silent, though Photon and Terrasteel would do their voice reveal on the fourth stream where they played through early Hardmode. These streams concluded with the death of the Moon Lord on the 21st of November. Photon and Adventurer32 have also made many edited highlights and video guides on the topic, though Terrasteel didn't upload anything because he's lazy.

Photon would create the Photon SMP on the 26th of November, bringing more attention to the Photon community.

Photon has also grown with the How to Make your Own series, which is his current flagship series.

As of February 23rd, 2021, Photon has 73,300 subscribers. When Photon reached 73,200 subscribers (6x Terrasteel), Photon will officially acknowledged Terrasteel's defeat in the sub war.

Photon is the 3rd largest active Terraria animator, after Antrex (235K subscribers) and JZBoy (993K subscribers). JZBoy is known to have acknowledged Photon's existence.