Life and work
Erik Range was born to a German father and a Russian mother in Braunschweig in 1977. He first gained recognition in the computer games industry as the guide for Bard characters that featured in the online role playing game Meridian 59. This is where he first used the gamer-tag "Gronkh", which he still uses today. Range said his pseudonym is a portmanteau of the name "Gregor Onkh". He has been managing partner and co-founder of PlayMassive GmbH since 2009. Fellow co-founder of the company is Valentin Matthias Rahmel, whose online pseudonym is Sarazar. Rahmel collaborates with Range on YouTube. Since 2010, Range has regularly published Let's Play videos, in which he talks about his progress in various games. He published his first video on 1 April 2010; a test recording for the online game Allods Online. Since then, he has become one of the most popular German-speaking providers of these formats. His YouTube channel has had over 4 million subscribers and over 1.7 billion video views, and is one of the most successful channels on the website. He is one of the first commercial German creators and providers of related videos. Range's work is supported by game manufacturers that want to promote for their own products through cooperation. The game developers of Daedalic Entertainment reported an increase in sales of '' Edna & Harvey: The Breakout'' after the game was promoted on Range's channel. Since early 2012, Gronkh was registered as a trademark to PlayMassive GmbH at the German Patent and Trademark Office. Range has been in a relationship with Tatjana Werth (alias ''Pandorya'') since December 2012. In 2018, Range left the PlayMassive GmbH and took the Gronkh trademark with him. He founded his own company ''Gods of Gaming GmbH''. Some gamers formerly employed by the PlayMassive GmbH followed him and are now employed by his new company. Range personally holds a German broadcasting license for ''GronkhTV'' and ''Gronkh'' broadcasting 'stations', although he considers the license to be useless. In 2017, Range was one of several high-profile YouTubers / live streamers who were targeted by a German authority (the ''Landesanstalt für Medien NRW'') that their online-activities require a broadcasting license. He is of the opinion that his activities don't require such an expensive license. But to avoid a long and costly legal struggle he applied for a broadcasting license in October 2017 and was granted one in January 2018. He was criticised for giving in to the demands instead of fighting them in court, setting a bad example. Some of the other targeted YouTubers / live streamers instead avoided the demands by emigrating from Germany or by stopping their activities.Internet presence
Range operates the website Gronkh.de and Gronkh.tv. In 2021, Range launched Gronkh.tv where he uploads his past Twitch Streams. This is a result of NetzDG blocking a lot of German streams in Twitch's stream-archive, including Range's. Gronkh.tv is free to watch for everyone and even has no ads on it. On the website Range has uploaded recent streams as well as old ones with the goal to have every stream Range ever streamed uploaded to it. However, Gronkh.de is not active and as of 2021 redirects to Gronkh.tv. While working with Rahmel, Range also operated a real-life channel called Die Superhomies, which was about the two men's travels. As of 2015, the channel has gathered around 440,000 subscribers since 2006, but hasn't been updated for years. Range's best-known series is his ''Let's PlayReferences
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