While everyone was engrossed in watching Apple’s WWDC 2020 keynote speech last night, Microsoft shared a piece of unfortunate news with us. Sadly, Microsoft’s game streaming platform, Mixer, is being shuttered on 22nd July – exactly one month from today.
Microsoft picked up Beam, a budding game streaming platform and TechCrunch Disrupt winner, and rebranded it to Mixer back in 2016. The platform, however, failed to gain the traction it needed to compete against competitors like Twitch and YouTube Gaming. The platform did sign some bigtime streamers, including Michael “Shroud” Grzesiek and Tyler “Ninja” Blevins last year, but in vain. Thus, it’s the end of the road for Mixer.
At the end of the day, it’s up to the streamer whether they want to switch to Facebook Gaming. I don’t see a majority of them moving to the social media service. Instead, it seems more plausible for them to stick to Twitch or YouTube Gaming.
Mixer roped in two of the most popular streamers on Twitch, Fortnite streamer Ninja and FPS God Shroud, to bulk up its lineup. The company expected to witness a huge rise in viewers by welcoming the two streamers, giving a boost to the community as a whole. However, it seems like all the work (and most importantly, money) Microsoft had poured into Mixer didn’t work out afterall.
I appreciate the Mixer community and everything I’ve been able to do on the platform. I love you guys and am figuring out my next steps. 💙
— Michael Grzesiek (@shroud) June 22, 2020
I love my community and what we built together on Mixer. I have some decisions to make and will be thinking about you all as I make them.
Also, if rumors are to be believed then both Shroud and Ninja are said to have turned down an impressive multi-million dollar package from Facebook Gaming. Esports consultant Rod Breslau took to Twitter to gossip that Facebook offered ‘almost double for the original Mixer contracts’ to Grzesiek and Blevins. They turned it down and are now rumored to have walked away with over $10 million and $30 million earnings from their Mixer deals respectively.
The signing of bigtime streamers, coming from Twitch, brought along some attention to Mixer. It was right behind Twitch in terms of hours streamed in Q1 2020 but overall, the platform was struggling to move ahead of rivals, including YouTube and Facebook Gaming. It wasn’t able to convert these signings into money-making machines for the platform, as planned.
More players make every game better. @WatchMixer built an incredible platform and grew a passionate community of talented creators.
— Twitch (@Twitch) June 23, 2020
