Drake unexpectedly appears in Twitch video game livestream, immediately breaks viewing records

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Drake has unexpectedly appeared in a video game livestream – and smashed through records as he did so.

The Canadian singer announced on Twitter that he would soon be playing Fortnite with popular streamer Ninja. He then logged onto Twitch and began to play with him.

The video quickly became the most viewed ever. At some points more than 600,000 people were watching the live video, easily breaking through records on Twitch, which was just over half that.

Ninja is one of the most popular streamers on Twitch, a service that allows players to broadcast their games in real time. And Fornite, a battle royale style game where cartoon characters try and stay alive while killing others, is its most popular game.

Into that situation appeared Drake, who said during the stream he had been playing Fortnite for a couple of months. He said the game was helpful to him and his team as a way of taking a break from long recording sessions.

Drake had created an avatar that – while also sporting a beard – did not bear much resemblance to the singer.

Twitch's official account seemed to very much enjoyed the visit from Drake, joking about the number of notifications he would now be getting on the service.

Even the tweet in which Drake announced he was heading into the game was incredibly popular. The post, which read only "playing fort nite with @ninja", has been retweeted more than 100,000 times already.