In a time of streamers becoming millionaires and people making pro gaming look like a get-rich-quick scheme, Canadian Fortnite streamer Nick Eh 30, real name Nicholas Amyoony, has decided to pack up his YouTube channel and head for Twitch. He grew his YouTube subscribers up to 4.6 million and has produced a wealth of family-friendly content for the platform. The switch to Twitch happened on September first, one month to the day after Ninja moved from Twitch to Mixer.
Nick Eh 30 has mentioned that he is confident his audience will follow him on his move from his current channel, started in 2014, to Twitch. In order to facilitate this, Twitch is making an offer to Nick’s current subscribers, allowing them to keep their loyalty badges when they purchase a subscription to the new Twitch channel. Nick also hopes that this move will allow him a new group of gamers to go up against and take his gaming to the next level. Hoping to break even further into Esports, Nick cited some of the organized competitions on Twitch, stating that he thinks it will help him to really boost his current play level.
It seems like the competition between streaming platforms is really heating up, with big names and faces becoming ripe for brand deals. Each platform that wishes to jump into the competition will have to secure streamers with big subscriber counts, vying for overall views in the streaming community. With big names like Amazon-owned Twitch, Microsoft-owned Mixer, and Google-owned YouTube, there’s LOTS of money to be offered, made, and spent getting new streamers to a budding platform. Most people are taking this as a reaction to Ninja leaving Twitch, but it’s really a sign of the overall landscape of streaming changing. It’s already hard to pin down specifics on how streaming affects businesses, and in the next few years, we will surely be seeing the trials and pitfalls of companies who have to learn the hard way how things are now.
This move for Twitch, is an obvious one, with Nick Eh 30 being one of the more family friendly streamers. A lot of streamers use adult language and swearing, making their channels a negative draw for any younger markets. With the acquisition of Nick Eh 30, Twitch has secured a LOT of content for their youngest subscribers. With a safe bet of the Canadian with a heart of gold, Twitch has allotted for safer content to reign. Whether or not we will see anything like the demonetization regulations currently active on YouTube in the future is unclear, but for now, Nick will help Twitch to have something safe for childhood viewers.
Aside from being a smart business move for Nick Eh 30, it does seem like a lot of childhood viewers that are a big part of his fandom will be left in the cold. The choice before them is to stay on YouTube, a free platform, or to move to paying for a subscription to Twitch in order to keep following their favorite streamer. Whether they have their loyalty badges or not, Twitch isn’t (entirely) free, and those kids’ parents will most likely have to cover the difference. Even with this view, however, the move is almost certainly going to be a beneficial one for both Nick and Twitch. But with big scandals like the occasional pornography mishap, it’s clear that companies like Twitch are going to go for safer, more child- and advertiser-friendly content as much as possible.