Earlier this year, Microsoft made the shocking announcement it was shutting down its Mixer streaming service, effectively leaving top streamers like Tyler "Ninja" Blevins without a home. Ninja experimented with streams on different platforms, streaming on both YouTube as well as Twitch, but stopped short of committing to any service. Now Ninja has finally confirmed that he will be streaming exclusively on Twitch moving forward.
Ninja made the announcement on Twitter, along with a short video showing off his new look. Ninja's first stream back on Twitch will take place at 2pm CST later today, and so fans will definitely want to tune in. In the meantime, more specific details about Ninja's Twitch exclusivity deal have since come to light, as he apparently signed a multi-year exclusivity contract with the company. This should result in some serious growth for Twitch. Ashray Urs, Head of Product at Streamlabs, said "Between Ninja's latest move and Twitch's prevalence as the industry leader, we expect more streamers will migrate to the platform in the coming weeks."
Twitch is the most popular game streaming service there is, and it's where Ninja initially built his platform. However, it's still somewhat surprising to see him return to Twitch. After all, Ninja has publicly criticized Twitch on multiple occasions in the past, particularly how it moderates content on its platform. With Ninja having officially returned to Twitch, it will be interesting to see if the company makes any changes to address his past criticisms or not.
Ninja isn't the only big-name streaming star to have returned to Twitch recently. Shroud, another streamer that Microsoft signed to a Mixer exclusivity deal, has also returned to Twitch. Shroud made his return to Twitch back in August, with his return stream drawing around 500,000 viewers.
Now that both Shroud and Ninja have returned to Twitch, the platform once again has a virtual monopoly on the world's top streaming talent. Really the only majorly popular streamer who isn't on Twitch is Dr Disrespect. For the uninitiated, Dr Disrespect was banned from Twitch earlier this year, with no specific reasoning for the ban given out to date. Dr Disrespect himself claims that he doesn't even know why Twitch banned him, but there are those who dispute that claim.
Dr Disrespect streams on YouTube now, with the other notable personality being PewDiePie. YouTube signed PewDiePie to an exclusive streaming deal, though the content creator is still better known for his pre-recorded videos than his livestreams. If YouTube hopes to compete with Twitch, it will definitely need to establish more prominent talent on its platform.
Source: Streamlabs