Popular streamer Michael “Shroud” Grzesiek stated earlier today that despite the recent issues with Twitch, and the trending campaign on Twitter #TWITCHISOVERPARTY, most streamers will be staying on the platform with no plans to move elsewhere.
For the unfamiliar, Twitch has been in hot water recently with the departure of Tyler “Ninja” Bevins, who moved over to Mixer, which is owned by Microsoft. Following Ninja’s departure, Twitch continued to use his old channel to promote its other content, a practice that it does not engage in with other departed streamers. The channel was briefly hijacked, pornographic content was shown, and despite all the noise that came afterwards, Shroud thinks that nothing will come of these events.
As Shroud normally does during his stream, he responded to chat and discussed the campaign on Twitter as it picked up momentum. When asked if he too would be considering a move away from Twitch, he declined, stating that “While I do think that Twitch kind of has to get their shit together, it’s not something to create this weird movement over.”
There is another major point to consider as well, and that is that Ninja is one of the most recognizable and bankable streamer names in the world right now. Wherever he goes, his viewers are likely to follow, and the deal with Microsoft at Mixer is sure to provide assistance in the process of attracting and retaining those viewers.
Shroud too could probably transition over, but what would be the incentive for him to do so? A switch would likely result in a loss of viewers. More importantly, most Twitch streamers likely do not command nearly enough clout to be able to drop one platform in favor of another.
Ninja was in a situation that allowed for the switch to be possible, but most are not.
While Shroud states that people will forget about these issues, his concession that Twitch needs to clean house and fix their problems is also revealing. The truth is that an organization like Twitch can only make so many mistakes before they begin to permanently turn away viewers and streamers, if they have not already.
We here at TheGamer presented a piece earlier today regarding how Twitch arrived in this predicament in the first place, and readers can click here to read about that. The reality is that if Twitch continues to behave as it does, we are not likely to see a single, defining act that forces them to close shop, but rather a slow, gradual death by a thousand cuts.
Still, Microsoft has deep pockets, and who is to say that Ninja is the only high-profile streamer they will snipe away from Twitch? If they offered streamers like Shroud and other popular, professional players a better financial incentive to stream on their platform rather than Twitch, we might be seeing the rise of Mixer in the coming year.