Months after the Mixer shutdown and a supposed bidding war to claim one of gaming’s biggest celebrities, Tyler ‘Ninja’ Blevins has revealed why he settled on a return to Twitch over a new home at YouTube.
Ninja has long-been one of the biggest personalities in the gaming industry. As a result, it’s no surprise that every major streaming platform was trying to place the highest bid and recruit him under their banners.
Months after the shocking Mixer shutdown, Ninja’s next move was still up in the air. A mysterious YouTube stream had fans believing that he’d just revealed his new home, though an eventual Twitch deal completely changed the narrative. So what happened in this period of relative silence?
It turns out that Ninja was simply weighing his options. As his close friends like Jack ‘CouRage’ Dunlop made the move to YouTube, to “avoid the pressures“ of Twitch’s Subscriber system, Ninja was close to joining him.
“Were you thinking about seriously going on YouTube?” Fortnite content creator Lachlan Power asked during a recent Duo session. “We were highly considering it,” Ninja quickly responded. “It was a lifestyle thing at that point.”
“No matter what, that transition at the start is always going to be super difficult,” he acknowledged. Regardless of where he ended up, he knew it would be challenging after representing Mixer for as long as he did. However, his sights seemed to have been set back on Twitch all along.
“Twitch is streaming right now. If I do amazing things for gaming and for streaming, I think it would have more of an impact if done on Twitch.” That’s not to say his impact would have been reduced had he joined YouTube instead, it just comes with a different label altogether, according to Ninja.
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“When someone says ‘you’re my favorite YouTuber,’ almost no one ever means your streams on YouTube. They think of your YouTube videos.
“It’s just the news in general. No one ever reports on a YouTuber getting a million live viewers or raising millions of dollars for charity,” he explained. “But when someone like Logan Paul f***s up, it’s YouTuber this, YouTuber that.”
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Obviously, a few other minor factors weighed on the decision. From the lack of a proper clipping tool, to the entire notion of gifted subs, a huge revenue stream for content creators, Ninja still believes they have a ways to go. “Competition is great for everyone,” he assured.
While Twitch is ‘the’ home for streamers in Ninja’s eyes, things could always change down the line as YouTube continues to evolve its own streaming service.
