Two of the titans in streaming, Ninja and Shroud, both said no to making the jump, forcing Mixer to buy them out of their contracts. Most video game fans at least recognize the two names even if they don’t watch their streams directly. Ninja began playing PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds but is most known for playing Fortnite, while Shroud is a former Counter-Strike competitor who has gone from PUBG to Call of Duty to Apex Legends. Both of these are in the top 10 streamers in the world.
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Overall, the numbers suggest this is the best move for the streamers. For comparison, Ninja’s move to Mixer from Twitch—where he had almost 15 million subscribers—saw his viewership drop from around 36,000 a month to 12,000. Shroud fell to 6,000 viewers in February after leaving his 7 million viewers on Twitch, where he averaged 24,000 viewers a month. Both of these streamers spent less than a year on Mixer before this shutdown. Twitch is the likely guess for where both of these streamers will end up, but anything is possible.
The move also helps set up the future of xCloud, which lets players stream their games directly to a mobile device without needing an Xbox console. With this transition, it appears Microsoft has found a home for xCloud with Facebook.
With all of the controversy surrounding Facebook’s security and privacy in the last few years, it will be strange to see everyone who found a home with Mixer suddenly shut down and moved to the social media giant. Only time will tell if this change helps Microsoft with viewers.
All Mixer sites and apps will redirect users to Facebook by July 22nd.
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