Ninja Returns To Twitch For First Time, Bringing Huge Numbers With Him
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Featured Image Credit: Twitch/Ninja
The world is full of unexpected comebacks. Mickey Rourke. Robert Downey Jr. Whooping cough. And now, Ninja. It's not like the hugely popular Twitch streamer and Fortnite pro ever really went away of course, but he recently returned to his native home of Twitch for the first time in ages, causing quite a stir in the process.
Tyler "Ninja" Blevins started streaming a game of Fortnite on his Twitch account just a few hours ago, almost exactly one year since he left the platform for his (now defunct) exclusivity deal with Mixer. it's the first time Blevins has been back in action on Twitch since he left, and a lot of fans were happy yo see him back.
As you may or may not know, depending on how much you care, Ninja was released from his contract with Mixer when the platform announced it would be shutting down in favour of a merger with Facebook Gaming. It's not entirely clear what the streamer's future holds, but he's been shopping around a wee bit, presumably seeing what feels right/will pay the most money.
Both Blevins and Michael "Shroud" Grzesiek reportedly received substantial payouts once Microsoft released them from their Mixer contracts. Payouts said to be in the tens of millions. According to esports consultant Rod Breslau,"Facebook offered an insane offer at almost double for the original Mixer contracts of Ninja and Shroud but Loaded/Ninja/Shroud said no and forced Mixer to buy them out."
"I love my community and what we built together on Mixer," Blevins wrote on Twitter in response to the Mixer announcement earlier this year. "I have some decisions to make and will be thinking about you all as I make them."
His debut stream on YouTube last month currently has more than 4 million views, while his recent Twitch stream pulled in nearly 100,000 viewers in less than fifteen minutes. This doesn't mean that Ninja will return to Twitch for good, of course. But there's every chance that he could decide to give up on exclusivity deals altogether and simply stream wherever he feels like it, whenever he feels like it. There's clearly still an audience for him on Twitch, anyway.
