Mixer Closure Might See Ninja Move To YouTube

Following the closure of Microsoft’s Mixer streaming site last week, Tyler “Ninja” Blevins was left without a home. He might not be homeless for long though and a YouTube appearance may be in Ninja’s future.

Previously, Blevins left Amazon’s Twitch last year for Mixer reportedly due to a contract dispute with the former. It was then viewed as the first of what Mixer touted as migration away from the dominant streaming service, according to ScreenRant.

Before long, other popular streamers like Cory “Gothalion” Michael, Soleil “Ewok” Wheeler, and Michael “shroud” Grzesiek soon followed while others left for YouTube.

The Ninja move to Mixer was viewed by both fans and fellow streamers as a money move especially since Mixer had never risen to either YouTube or Twitch’s level. But the move also reportedly generated Ninja as much as $30 million, something Twitch probably was not prepared to offer.

Even with Blevins’ departure, and other streamers leaving in droves last year, problems with abuse at the company, and a community divided over uneven rule enforcement, Twitch still recovered in 2020 hitting viewership records in the first part of the year.

Twitter user @HYPEX spotted what could possibly be a big clue as to Ninja’s next streaming destination. @HYPEX found a video simply called “Test” on Ninja’s YouTube channel. The video was quickly made private, but not quickly enough to keep screenshots of the video from making the rounds.

Although Blevins himself has stayed mum on the topic, the test video is fueling speculation that a YouTube move is imminent. Ninja’s manager and wife Jessica Blevins tweeted earlier this week “this week will be fun,” which many took to mean that a big announcement from the streamer would be coming soon.

Upon the closure of Mixer, a spot on Facebook Gaming was offered to Ninja which he subsequently declined. This leaves a considerably shorter list of sites where a popular streamer like him will be taking his services to, essentially a tossup between returning to Twitch or jumping to YouTube.

Not every former Mixer streamer is as lucky though. ScreenRant notes that smaller streamers without the name recognition of Ninja are having a harder time getting their audiences to follow them as they use their Mixer pages to advertise their channels on other streaming services.

Those smaller streamers were also hurt by Ninja’s initial move to Mixer as resources that could have gone to them were instead diverted to people like Ninja and other bigger names in streaming.