[jwplayer 91I9RIGm]Ninja’s return to Twitch on an exclusive deal was big news to most of the gaming world – but not to the two-time champ, Dr Disrespect, who took a subtle shot at the announcement while streaming on YouTube.
Dr Disrespect was permanently banned from Twitch for undisclosed reasons back in June 2020. It was a loss of one of the platform’s most popular streamers, but in an entirely more controversial and mysterious fashion than the previous year’s loss of both Ninja and Shroud to hopeful rival, Mixer.
Like Doc taking a break and little vacation from streaming before returning on YouTube, both Ninja and Shroud took their time after Mixer shockingly folded in June before deciding on a return, as well. Shroud made his return to Twitch in early August, but Ninja took longer to assess his options — trying out an impromptu YouTube test stream in July and a surprise Twitch stream in early August. Finally, Ninja settled on Twitch on September 10, prompting the Doc to take an ever-so-subtle shot at the pair at the start of his stream.
Settling into his stream, which would be focused almost entirely on the Vikkstar Warzone Showdown tournament, Dr Disrespect cleverly alluded to the Ninja and Twitch news. With the announcement coming just about one hour before Doc went live, he took a quick break from giving shout-outs to new Champions Club members to take a subtle shot at the lack of news that day.
The two-time champ, 6’8” streaming dynamo took a break from talking about his 37-inch vertical to look around the room and ask if there was “Any big news today, we’re talking about? Anything? Nothing?” before shrugging his shoulders, wrapping it up with an “I figured,” and moving on to talking about his upcoming tournament.
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Ninja, despite streaming on Twitch just once in about a year, still has the platform’s most followers by far. With just over 15 million followers, the difference between him and second-most (Tfue, with about 9 million) is as large as the difference between second-most and…the 17th-most. It was obviously big news, but not worthy of the Doc’s attention.
It remains to be known what happened between Dr Disrespect and Twitch, but, for now, both sides seem to be content just pretending that the other doesn’t exist.