Two years after Michael “Shroud” Grzesiek’s father died of lung cancer, the popular Twitch actor is ready to honor his father by helping others going through the same thing. is one The biggest streamers On stage, it is not surprising that his first passion is charity. But one big stream isn’t enough — he wants to create a month-long event to earn money “in the most gamer-like way ever.”

Grzesiek told Polygon that his father used to play PC games with him when he was just 3 years old. And when he finally started thinking about becoming an esports player, his father admired him. “At the time, I was a teenager and honestly didn’t earn much from playing games but he still encouraged me to do it because he knew it was something I loved,” he said. “If it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t be where I am today.”

The FragathonA daily charity stream that will run for all of January’s fundraising for St. Jude’s Research Children, is dedicated to him. Profit from every subscription and every Bit will be donated. And because it’s Grzesiek, who is known for his clear aim in shooting, he is donating a dollar for every kill in the game that he or his friends score during the stream as well.

You can see the number of kills, or frags, displayed in the upper left of the stream. It doesn’t matter if it is Marvel Rivals, ValuationOr The sign of meaning; Every elimination counts. It’s called Frag Counter, and through “pixel tracking and game-specific APIs” it can automatically update the numbers, according to Ricky Gonzalez, executive producer of Loaded, the talent streamer agency that represents Grzesiek.

After making an emergency stop for a wildfire near Grzesiek’s home in Los Angeles in January 8thFragathon has returned with more than $200,000 in funding and more to go. Grzesiek told Polygon that there is no set schedule, but the stream will rotate through guests and will sometimes move to the gym or a table for board games.

The whole thing took three teams over the holidays to complete and was running on “over 15 cameras, 13 PCs and an infinite amount of RGB LED lights that seemed to be piped throughout the house,” Gonzalez said. Most of that is tucked away in a room behind Grzesiek’s usual setup to create a LAN hub for his close friends to join him.

“We discussed having all of this done in the studio but it wouldn’t really feel like ‘Shroud’ if it wasn’t at home,” Grzesiek said. “I want my friends and guests to feel at home when they’re here and we want that feeling through the stream, whether it’s in my office, at the LAN center, on my couch, or in my kitchen.”

Six gaming computers sit back in a room with blue LEDs, each with two monitors (one for gaming, one for reading chat) and a microphone. Where the walls aren’t covered with Shroud-branded keyboards and signs, there are murals depicting crosshairs and the Fragathon symbol. The budget is a little higher than a LAN party you’d throw together with friends, but the DIY spirit is there. Grzesiek wants it to “feel like the old gamer days when you would just play a lot of different games with all your friends around you singing, laughing, playing games, and making memories together.”

The production team and Grzesiek are already thinking about how to improve Fragathon if it returns in the future – and it looks like it will. Gonzalez said they try to “keep it comfortable and familiar” but are ready to expand next time.

“I keep saying this on stream but I know my dad wants to see this,” he said. “As a full-time broadcaster, a lot of my life is broadcast online. It’s hard to draw the line between “personal” and “professional” sometimes and I’ve always just wanted to be my true self in the water, so doing something in his honor – he was the one who introduced me to the game in the first place – just felt right.”