Ninja vs. Twitch

I keep hearing a lot of talk about Tyler Blevins (aka Ninja) leaving Twitch to go to Mixer. To me, there are two main arguments that most people (or perhaps, as often is the case, the loudest people) are presenting, and that is that either “Twitch is dead now that Ninja is leaving” or “Ninja is dead now that he is leaving Twitch.” Frankly, neither are the case.

First, “Twitch is dead now that Ninja is leaving.” I’ve been hearing this a lot, or even “Twitch has been going downhill and this is the last straw!” Even better still, “Twitch only cares about booby streamers!”

I’ve been a streamer on Twitch for over 5 years. These talks have always been floating around, particularly the “Twitch only cares about booby streamers” argument, whatever that is. Twitch has its flaws, obviously, and I am in no way saying it has perfect practices in place for how to manage its user base. However, to say that it is going to fail as a company because it has a couple good looking girls showing a little skin, or a couple bad apples who people feel aren’t reprimanded correctly, is utterly laughable. In a similar vein, to say that Twitch is going to fail because one of their content creators left the platform, is also silly. Twitch has had large content creators come and go and, while they weren’t the size and notoriety of Ninja, they were quite large in their own right and Twitch has made out fine. The size of twitch as a platform hasn’t seen a big shift after the Ninja departure. Much of the viewers that he would normally be getting have seemingly been distributed amongst the other top Fortnite streamers on the platform, suggesting that Twitch has brand loyalty that runs deeper than any one content creator. While many people are annoyed with Twitch for any number of reasons, they always have been, yet Twitch has continued to grow.

”Ninja is dead now that he has left Twitch!” or even better, “How could Ninja leave Twitch after all they’ve done for him!?” Well if it isn’t obvious already, Ninja was the pride and joy of Twitch. Twitch propelled Ninja into the forefront of the platform through marketing him in traditional media and making him a household name. That being said, Twitch far from MADE Ninja who he is. Would he be the viral sensation without their help? Potentially not to the degree that he is, but he was the #1 Fortnite streamer before the game blew up to the unprecedented level that it has. In other words, he set himself up for his own success. Twitch benefited from him just as much as the reverse. It was a mutually beneficial relationship. Ninja was projected as the face of Twitch and, in turn, Twitch presented the face of their platform for the world to see (not just on Twitch). The combination of Ninja being the “first to market” for top tier and entertaining gameplay on Fortnite, combined with Twitch needing a good “family friendly” face to represent their brand to the masses, lead to both parties benefiting from each other’s success. Also, to say that Ninja will now suddenly become a washed up content creator simply for changing platforms is highly unlikely. Ninja is now the face of Mixer, and the face of Microsoft gaming. He will have just as many resources behind him to position him in front of the masses again. I have my own thoughts on Mixer as a whole, which I can touch on in another post, but he will be just fine there.

In short, both Twitch and Ninja are pretty much “too big to fail” at this point. Both have great brand recognition and brand loyalty. Twitch will continue to be the leading platform in live streaming and Ninja will be the face of Microsoft gaming with his already immensely large audience.