Right now, streamer and Fortnite star Tyler “Ninja” Blevins is a man with a gigantic fan base and ambitions, but without a contract with a streaming platform. Now there are indications that the former Twitch star could be moving to YouTube. A test stream apparently went live by mistake and was then deleted.
Update 11:49 PM: Indeed, Ninja has now launched his first official live stream on YouTube. Whether this definitively means that he is permanently moving to YouTube is not yet known.
According to insider information from Rod Breslau from “sources,” Ninja has not yet made a decision on a deal. He is still in negotiations. The stream on YouTube is done at Ninja’s own expense. He could also stream on Twitch again.
The first live stream lasted 1 hour and 37 minutes. He played Fortnite together with Tim TheTatman, his friend, and wore the Ninja skin.
Currently, the video already has 1.9 million views. That’s far more than he achieved in the last few weeks with videos about Valorant. The stream reached over 100,000 viewers live.
Original message:
This is the story of Ninja: Tyler “Ninja” Blevins is now 29 years old. The American with changing hair colors has been a professional gamer for 10 years. He started as a pro gamer with Halo 3, became a streamer in 2011, and achieved his breakthrough on Twitch in 2017 with H1Z1 and PUBG.
In 2018, during the hype around Fortnite: Battle Royale, he reached unprecedented heights. His Twitch channel grew tremendously. During that time, Ninja practically streamed constantly; he referred to himself as a “slave to the stream”. But he set new standards for what is possible as a gamer. He was invited to talk shows and made it to the cover of a sports magazine.
In 2019, when the hype around Fortnite and himself cooled down a bit, Ninja switched from Twitch to the Microsoft service Mixer, presumably for a lot of money. Although he had fewer viewers there than before and had to deal with more criticism, he apparently earned well on Mixer and had a more pleasant life than before.
He had more time for friends, family, and to fly to events on private jets.
This is his current situation: On June 22, Microsoft announced that it was shutting down the platform “Mixer”. This freed Ninja again since his contract was exclusively tied to Mixer. Without Mixer, there was no contract anymore.
It has been reported by insiders that Facebook had offered Ninja a lot of money to switch from Mixer to them. The talk was about “twice the amount of money as at Mixer.” However, Ninja had his Mixer contract cashed out – reputedly receiving $30 million in one shot.
Ninja has updated his Twitch account, but has not streamed there again yet. Instead, it was said that he wanted to weigh his options.
Test stream of Ninja spotted on YouTube
This indicates a switch to YouTube: On July 7, fans discovered a “test for a live stream” on Ninja’s channel. It was deleted shortly after.
Some users on Twitter now conclude that it is now “very likely” that Ninja is going to YouTube.
Ninja’s manager and wife, Jessica Blevins, announced “fun” for this week (via twitter).
YouTube has been trying to push live streaming of games more aggressively lately, in addition to the established “videos on demand.” For this, YouTube has also signed Fortnite players like CouRage, a friend of Ninja.
YouTube vs. Twitch vs. Facebook
This is the reasoning behind it: The move to YouTube is indeed the logical alternative to Twitch. On YouTube, Ninja already has a large fan base from his “videos on demand.” He has 23.8 million subscribers on YouTube – which is even more than he has on Twitch (14.7 million).
Surely, YouTube will also offer him a lot of money, probably more than Twitch. Ninja allegedly left Twitch in 2019 because they did not offer him enough financial incentives to stay.
- YouTube could be the sensible alternative, the middle ground of money and relevance. With this, YouTube would bind the next major star exclusively after “PewDiePie”; they want to expand their live streaming and have already been strong in this area in recent months
- On Twitch, Ninja would surely have more live viewers and therefore relevance, but would perhaps only be one of many stars alongside established streamers like Tfue, Myth, or summit1g. Moreover, it is questionable whether he will get the conditions he wants in 2020 if they did not suit him in 2019.
- On Facebook, Ninja would probably earn the most money and be the star of the platform, but would have few viewers there – so he would be back in a situation like before on Mixer. Facebook is considered by some to be unsuitable for streamers because the platform is not very “gaming-friendly,” and people there use their real names. The German streamer MontanaBlack described streaming on Facebook as simply “garbage.”
While Ninja, after the end of Mixer, seemingly has all doors open and big money waiting, many other smaller streamers now have trouble finding their way in the vast streaming world. There were even some tears:
While Ninja and shroud rake in money, small Mixer streamers are completely finished
