Streaming star Tyler ‘Ninja’ Blevins dove deeper into his reasoning behind moving from Twitch to Mixer – claiming that while it was never his plan to leave, doing so was to the benefit of everyone.
Ninja sent shockwaves across the streaming world when he announced that he was finished with Twitch and would be heading to Mixer back on August 1. There has been plenty of speculation behind his reasoning for the move, but regardless, it opened up the door for everyone else to depart their home platforms for new pastures.
Michael ‘Shroud’ Grzesiek has ultimately joined him on Mixer, but Ninja finally opened up on starting the Twitch exodus and helping to build up the growing platform during his appearance on The True Geordie podcast.
Ninja noted that prior to his move, Mixer had 5% of the total hours watched when it came to streams, meaning that he hypothetically should have had around 2,500 viewers – but he’s brought over a lot more folks.
“Let’s just look at the numbers bro, at the end of my Twitch life I was averaging like 20 to 30k viewers every single day and to literally be able to average 10,000 viewers on Mixer, it’s astounding,” Blevins said.
“It’s actually incredible, I mean, I still get people who are like ‘only 8,000, only 9,000(viewers)’ and I’m like ‘homie, do you know how great that is on this platform right now?’ and it’s still growing,” Ninja continued. “It’s exciting man and we’re really working on a lot of cool stuff to take advantage of the situation Mixer is in right now.”
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The streaming superstar revealed that he wasn’t actively looking to leave Twitch prior to his departure and was deep in negotiations as he wanted to “make it work,” but a breakdown allowed Mixer to swoop in and clean up on the deal.
While Mixer has been seen as the smaller platform, with a major drop off in numbers compared to its rival, Ninja was more aware of what the move was “going to do for a lot of other streamers and gamers.”
He stated: “Obviously the deal was great and I do love the platform, it’s incredible, but I knew – my wife and I – we went into this like we’re doing this for everyone else – and looked what happened man. We got people being re-signed to Twitch, people moving to YouTube, and now more people being signed and making deals, and that’s how it should be.”
With the precedent of moving being set by Ninja, and streamers constantly heading away from Twitch, it remains to be seen as to who the next big name departure will be.
Shroud, who followed in Ninja’s footsteps, claimed that Jack ‘Courage’ Dunlop’s move to YouTube was the sign of things “just getting started” in a wider industry shake-up, so there seems to be some big moves in the pipeline.