From Twitch to Mixer, and now back to Twitch once more: Tyler “Ninja” Blevins today revealed that, after his rather public break-up with the site one year ago, he’s returning to Twitch exclusively. I know, there wasn’t really much doubt, but it’s still good to know.
A new chapter, only on @Twitch pic.twitter.com/cv2qFFFI0p
— Ninja (@Ninja) September 10, 2020
Ninja announced the move on Twitter, and Twitch backed him up with a tweet of its own. He’s apparently signed a multi-year deal with Twitch’s parent company, Amazon, to stream on the platform exclusively — a surprisingly chummy arrangement given how the relationship left off. Ninja has streamed on the site at least once in the last year or so, though he hadn’t publicly committed to it before now.
Blevins broke with Twitch last August, complaining of poor treatment by Twitch staff, and joined the competition… or at least, the closest thing the monolith that is Twitch had at the time: Microsoft’s Mixer. He wasn’t the only one either, as several other streamers left Twitch for other platforms. Shroud also joined Mixer, for example, while several other streamers joined either YouTube or Facebook. While Mixer never quite managed to rise from Twitch’s shadow, it was doing well enough on its own — or so it seemed. Then, in June, Microsoft abruptly announced the site’s closure.
To new beginnings. @ninja pic.twitter.com/UbBSDwezvy
— Twitch (@Twitch) September 10, 2020
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After the fall of Mixer, the question of where its many refugees would wind up has been front and center. Mixer was doing well enough, at the time Microsoft closed up shop, there were millions of streamers who now had to find a new platform (assuming they didn’t stop streaming entirely). Well now we know for sure where Ninja, still the golden boy of the streaming world, would end up.
It’s not really a surprise that Twitch and Ninja would be so quick to work out their differences. Without Mixer to offer greener pastures, the two are really each other’s best options. Twitch is where Ninja built his massive following, which never really migrated to Mixer with him. Better the devil you know, right? Ninja also said in a statement that he plans to use his platform to “elevate and bring more eyes to underrepresented creators,” though he doesn’t specify exactly what that’ll entail.
To check out how he’s doing, check out Ninja’s channel here.
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