Ninja and Shroud changed Twitch for Mixer

In 2019, a number of major streamers immediately switched from Twitch to Mixer. They have not been able to turn over the “game” yet: Twitch remains the main streaming platform, and the Mixer audience among all platforms is only a few percent. Loud announcements did not particularly affect Microsoft’s struggle with Twitch, but how did the streamers’ careers change after the transition?

Ninja finally relaxed

The audience of the most popular Twitch streamer after switching to Mixer has decreased several times. Number of followers Tyler Ninja Blevins decreased from 10 million to 2 million, and the average online fell from 40 thousand to 7.5 thousand people. Blevins himself is not very worried about statistics: recently on a broadcast, he admitted that he did not care about the number of viewers. The streamer’s income is unlikely to be affected – according to rumors, under a contract with Mixer, he will earn $ 20-30 million.

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The main thing for Ninja is that after leaving Twitch, he was able to make a comfortable broadcast schedule. Streamer repeatedly complained that he felt exhausted because of the need to go on the air every day. For example, in January 2018, he streamed 330 hours, and in the first week of February 2023, only ten. Competition on Twitch forced him to work every day. A two-day break due to a trip to E3 in 2018 cost Ninja 40 thousand followers.

Streamer also admitted that for several years he had only one short vacation – a five-day honeymoon. At Mixer, Ninja allowed himself to take a weekend and sometimes not appear online for a few days. Ninja content has not changed – 99% of the time it streams Fortnite. At the same time, Ninja did not become less media: Blevins now has enough time to attend TV shows or participate in collaborations with other celebrities on YouTube. For half a year Ninja managed to play Fortnite with Mark Hamill, lie in the same bathtub with Kevin Hart on his show and even sing on a talent show in an ice cream costume.

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Now, one of the main tasks of Blevins, as he himself admitted, is to develop his own brand. A month after switching to Mixer, Ninja announced a partnership with adidas Originals: he was the first independent gamer with whom the company entered into an agreement. Recently, adidas Originals together with Ninja released a model of sneakers, made in the signature colors of the streamer. Blevins also starred in adidas commercials and was the first streamer to receive Fortnite’s personalized skin.

Originals works with life style stars. Ninja has a decent company: with Originals, for example, singer Beyonce and rapper Kanye West launched their line. Ninja is gradually moving away from the role of an exclusively streamer – broadcasts have given him fame, but now he wants to use this resource differently.

Shroud is gaining momentum

Mike Shroud Grzesik different from Ninja. The former cybersportsman does not appear on TV channels, he is more focused on the games themselves. After switching to Mixer, the frequency of his streams remained virtually unchanged. For the last week Grzesik was on air for 50 hours – this is slightly less than its usual performance on Twitch, where shroud per month streamed about 220 hours. Its content has remained the same – it’s shooters, World of Warcraft and major AAA-new items.

On Mixer, the shroud audience shrank significantly – on Twitch online, it broadcasted 20-30 thousand people, and on the platform from Microsoft – 6-7 thousand. However, unlike most of the streamers that arrived, Grzesik’s indicators are gradually growing: for example , some of its broadcasts in January were watched by 10 thousand viewers, and in the first week of February, his channel became the most popular on Mixer.

Shroud had 7 million followers on Twitch, while there are less than a million followers on Microsoft’s platform, but a positive trend is also noticeable – every day this figure is growing by 1.5-2 thousand people. Grzesik himself attributes the decrease in audience to the fact that many of his viewers simply do not yet know where he is now streaming. However, there are other reasons for the fall of the audience.

The development of the shroud channel was largely hindered by the limited functionality of the site – the lack of a clip creation system, which was only recently added in beta mode. Grzesik was always famous for his highlights in shooters. For example, a clip in which he single-handedly destroys two squads in Apex Legends has gained over 800 thousand views. On his channel on Twitch there were videos with even more impressive indicators – 900 thousand and even a million views. Most shroud highlights were immediately poured by his fans on reddit, almost immediately falling into the tops of sections. After switching to Mixer, he lost this audience.

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The main thing that shroud lost on Mixer, – Twitch Rivals streamer tournaments in which he constantly participated – and quite successfully. The competition for Apex Legends at the beginning of 2019, for example, over 500 thousand people watched in the peak. Together with DrDisRespect, he also participated in the streamer championship for the “royal battle” in Call of Duty: Black Ops 4. At the Mixer, he can no longer be part of such competitive competitions and collaborations with other streamers.

KingGothalion did not even get into the top 30

In addition to superstars, Mixer lured and less hype, but still popular streamers. Using the example of Corey KingGothalion Michael, who specialized in broadcasting on Destiny 2, you can trace the path that streamers of the tier-1.5 discharge pass on the platform from Microsoft.

On Twitch, his channel was in the top 100 with 1.2 million followers, and on Mixer for several months he could not even get 150 thousand. Even by the standards of the Microsoft KingGothalion platform, it shows a rather average result – 31st place in the streamer rating. If shroud and Ninja, the average number of spectators stabilized after a sharp collapse and even began to grow slightly, then KingGothalion does not notice any progress. Its online has already fallen below a thousand users.

Another difficulty of streaming on new sites is the underdevelopment of many categories. On Mixer, for example, there are only shooters in the top – Apex, Fortnite, PUBG and Tarkov. The conditional Dota 2 or League of Legends is practically not broadcast here or it is done extremely rarely.

The problem with Mixer is that it does not yet have its core audience. Viewers who came along with Ninja and shroud watch only their channels, and then return to Twitch. When there are no broadcasts of “stars,” the service can have only 29.7 thousand viewers with 8.5 thousand active channels — 3.5 people on the air. At the same moment on Twitch, 860 thousand viewers and 31.5 thousand broadcasts. The key here is not only the magnitude of the indicators, but also their ratio – on Twitch for each streamer there are 27 viewers. Due to financial injections, Mixer got a “supply” in the form of a number of popular channels, but the “demand” did not grow at the same sharp pace.

Almost all streamers after leaving Twitch said that Mixer is a great opportunity for their professional growth and self-realization. However, only Ninja has really brought this slogan to life. The rest did not add anything radically new to their broadcasts: they stream the same games and build their communication with the audience in the same way. Only the size of this audience has changed.