Ninja makes a reappearance on Twitch almost a year after leaving for Mixer.
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It looks like Ninja has finally made a return to Twitch. The streamer, real name Tyler Blevins, made a surprise return to Twitch for the first time since he left the service for an exclusive deal with Mixer.
Mixer shut down last month, which led to them releasing Ninja from his contract. This gives him the freedom to stream on whatever platform he likes, so naturally he made a reappearance on Twitch. Ninja’s return to Twitch marks almost a year to the day of his departure for Mixer.
Early in July, Ninja also made a surprise return to YouTube where he streamed Fortnite. This stream managed to pick up a huge 4 million views. In Ninja’s return to Twitch, he also played Fortnite, alongside Dr. Lupo and hit nearly 100,000 viewers in just 15 minutes after going live.
At the moment, he is still the most followed streamer on Twitch, with 14.8 million followers despite his year-long absence.
It looks like for now, he’s testing the waters out on a couple of different platforms, so whether his return to Twitch is a permanent one is unclear at the moment. So far, there’s nothing to suggest that Ninja has an exclusive deal at Twitch or any other platform.
At the beginning of his stream, Ninja explained his current situation without giving too much away. “I’m kind of like in a thing, but not really. I’m allowed to see other people.”
Ninja’s high-profile move to Mixer led to a bit of a contract battle as the biggest streaming platforms all tried to compete to keep their top streamers. Mixer’s huge budget certainly threw a lot of competition into the mix, but with the platform now out of the picture, we’ll have to see how the remaining platforms compete.
YouTube and Twitch are the main players right now, but with Facebook Gaming growing quickly over the past year, who knows what the streaming industry will look like in a few months.
As Mixer merged with Facebook Gaming, you might naturally assume that Ninja would be heading there. However, even after being offered a huge salary, Ninja reportedly opted to take his time and think through the decision. He does after all, still appear to have a loyal fan base on Twitch and around 24 million subscribers on YouTube. He could still end up with Facebook Gaming but we will just have to wait and see.
