Around a year ago, a dream began for the biggest German streamers: Allegedly, the streaming service Joyn would soon launch a competitor project to Twitch and only hire the biggest and best streamers, paying them millions of euros a year. But the dream has burst, as MontanaBlack recounts.
What kind of dream was that?
- In June 2023, the German top streamer Antonia “Reved” Staab was quite excited. She could hardly contain herself in a live stream on Twitch.
- It was clear: She knew a secret, but couldn’t talk about it yet. She promised: Fans would have to wait another six months, then “everything would look very different.”
- Reved told her fans: “Huge Signings are coming, you will be shocked by the German signings.” Things were “really heating up” behind the scenes, which is why she was so agitated.
Joyn planned a streaming service only for the biggest streamers
What excited her so much back then? At the time, it was thought that Reved was excited because the Twitch competitor Kick was throwing around million-dollar contracts. The big US stars xQc and Amouranth had switched from Twitch to Kick for dream sums.
But in reality, as we know now, the streaming service “Joyn” was planning its own platform in competition with Twitch and was making huge offers to the best German streamers.
Reved could hardly contain herself from excitement back then:
This was Joyn’s plan: As the German streamer MontanaBlack recounts in a stream, Joyn’s plan was (via twitter):
- To only hire streamers who had made a name for themselves on Twitch.
- It was not possible for all others to stream there.
- They wanted to pay the “elite streamers” huge sums. They should be contracted for 2 or 3 years.
“Dollar signs in their eyes”
This is what MontanaBlack says: The German streamer says many already had “dollar signs” in their eyes. Because it was a chance for them to earn more money than they had ever received before.
Even the streamer MckyTV, who is now ending his career, had signed a preliminary contract with Joyn.
He himself was offered “a higher 7-figure amount,” but he declined because he did not see the potential for Joyn to be as good or better than Twitch. For him, this was a requirement to switch.
And why is the project failing now? This seems to have fizzled out, as MontanaBlack hints. The project was actually set to launch in mid-2023, but to this day, nothing has happened.
What would streamers have earned? The streamer Scurrows revealed some details in a tweet: The offers sound really dreamy, as MontanaBlack and Trymacs were each offered 9 million euros and 5% of the shares.
EliasN97, the biggest German streamer, would have even earned 12 million euros, but he declined.
However, Scurrows admits that these numbers are without guarantee.
Scurrows, who is closely connected to the casino service Stake and its platform Kick, has always viewed Joyn critically. The offers are “unrealistic.”
This is what happens when “retirees” want to run a platform.
Deal hung in the air for a year
This is what is behind it: It was pretty much the worst-kept secret in the industry that something big was brewing in the German streaming scene. Over the last year, there were constant hints about this project because streamers apparently are terrible at keeping secrets.
However, the deal was too good to be true. A service only for the German-speaking market and only for selected streamers seems to be a significant disadvantage. Apparently, Joyn wanted to cut server costs that are causing Twitch so much trouble.
It sounds a bit like Mixer, which also lured away the biggest stars from Twitch but quickly realized that this was not the way to success.
It is clear why this sounded like a great deal for streamers. Right now, Twitch has to cut costs, and the fat times for streamers seem to be over:
The days of fat million-dollar deals for streamers on YouTube and Twitch seem to be over.
