Twitch has learned from the departures of top streamers Tyler “Ninja” Blevins and Michael “shroud” Grzesiek in 2019: The biggest streamer on the platform, Imane “Pokimane” Anys, will not be switching to Mixer, but will remain exclusively on Twitch.
The streamer says: The 23-year-old Pokimane has stated that she signed an exclusive contract with Twitch and will stay on the platform.
Several streaming platforms approached her with financially enticing offers:
I don’t want to lie: These exclusive live-streaming deals are a lot of money. This is money that can change the lives of us streamers. I had offers from many different platforms, but in the end, it came down to two.
Imane “Pokimane” Anys
Pokimane says other offers were “more lucrative,” but she decided to stay on Twitch, even though there was “less money” involved. Apparently, Pokimane did not want to have to move her Twitch community to a new platform.
Pokimane can hardly imagine streaming without her chat. It would be much more boring, she says: “I’d rather take less money and have more fun.”
She says Twitch’s offer was “very fair.” However, the difference to the better offer was more money than she has in her own account.
Pokimane – At 23, the biggest streamer on Twitch
Who is Pokimane? The streamer is by far the largest female streamer on Twitch with 3.96 million followers. Overall, she has the eighth-largest active Twitch channel.
Pokimane started on Twitch in 2013. She initially streamed a lot of LoL, then became big with Fortnite in 2018. However, since 2019 the streamer has mainly been in “Just Chatting,” where she communicates with her chat.
In an interview with Forbes, she says that Twitch is still leading in streaming. Other platforms are slowly growing, but Twitch is far ahead in terms of tools and infrastructure.
Pokimane has no problem with the fact that her “skills as a gamer” rarely come into play. She is primarily a “personality” streamer, of which there are several on Twitch, regardless of gender.
Pokimane says: “God bless Ninja”
What’s behind this: Since Twitch star Tyler “Ninja” Blevins switched to Mixer in August 2019, a “war for streamers” has erupted. A streaming agency, Loaded, played a significant role here: They ensure their clients can now earn big.
In the months that followed, some Twitch streamers either switched platforms or signed exclusive deals to stay on Twitch.
The amounts of money involved are officially unknown, but it is assumed that the biggest streamers like shroud and Ninja receive double-digit millions annually.
In January 2020, Pokimane said that Tyler “Ninja” Blevins had paved the way for streamers to cash in: “God bless Ninja for making the switch because now all platforms have to pay big money for streamers.”
Now the platforms have to pay her and all her friends for what the streamers were doing anyway.
- Even though shroud and Ninja receive a lot of money on Mixer, they have also lost many viewers on the new platform.
- Although Mixer signed such big stars in 2019, they seem to be the losers in the streaming battle at the moment.
