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Shroud joins Ninja in ditching Twitch for Mixer

By Koh Wanzi - on 25 Oct 2019, 11:29am

Shroud joins Ninja in ditching Twitch for Mixer

Shroud

Twitch superstar Michael "Shroud" Grzesiek is leaving Twitch for Microsoft's rival Mixer streaming platform. Shroud's move comes after Fortnite streamer Tyler "Ninja" Blevins, who was arguably the most popular streamer on Twitch with 14.7 million followers, announced that he would be streaming exclusively on Mixer in early August. 

Shroud is a former CS:GO player with Cloud9 who has gained quite an ardent following on Twitch by playing PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, better known as PUBG. More recently, he was also involved in the development of Apex Legends and was one of the more prolific streamers of Respawn Entertainment's new battle royale title. At last count, he had just over 7 million followers on Twitch, putting him among the Amazon-owned service's biggest names. 

Along with Turner "Tfue" Tenney, he's actually the next most popular streamer on Twitch after Ninja, and the pickup is a big win for Mixer. Shroud took to Twitter to announce the move, quipping "Same Shroud. New Home". 

What's interesting is that Shroud actually saw Ninja's departure as an opportunity for him to grow further on Twitch. "Hey man, Ninja's gone," he noted during a stream in August. "It's all me, baby. Gotta take advantage." That said, Shroud probably still has plenty of room to stake his claim on Mixer as well, which is a relatively new platform compared to the giant that is Twitch. 

However, both Ninja's and Shroud's decision to switch to Mixer is proof that Twitch isn't the unassailable behemoth that it may seem at times. Of course, not everyone is a Ninja or Shroud with a massive following behind them, so smaller streamers might still choose to stick to Twitch. This is a step in the right direction for Mixer though, and the fledging platform is gradually growing in popularity, with hours watched on Mixer jumping about 3 million in August, according to data from StreamElements. But it still has a long way to go to challenge Twitch, which saw its hours watched increase from 850.6 million to 932.1 million in the same time period.

There has been speculation that Microsoft paid Ninja around US$50 million to stream on Mixer, but it's not clear whether Shroud received a similar deal. Either way, Microsoft has deep pockets, and it's not shy about shelling out money to push its own platform forward. In fact, as The Verge's Tom Warren points out, Mixer also ties in with Microsoft's xCloud game streaming service, which will let users launch games directly from live streams. 

Shroud's Twitch account has already lost its verified check. At the time of writing, he already has nearly 300,000 followers on Mixer and appears to be streaming the new Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, which has had its release moved up.

Source: Shroud (Twitter)

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