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The full episode, in writing.
On July 31, 2019, Tyler “Ninja” Blevins stunned the gaming world by announcing he would leave Twitch and stream exclusively on Mixer, Microsoft’s live streaming platform. Ninja had been one of Twitch’s biggest stars, with over 14 million followers at the time, making this one of the most dramatic moves in streaming history. The very next day, August 1, 2019, Ninja went live for the first time on Mixer, drawing hundreds of thousands of viewers and sparking intense debate across forums, social media, and YouTube.
To really understand how this erupted into one of gaming’s most talked-about controversies, you have to go back to Mixer’s origins. The platform started as Beam, launched January 5, 2016, by co-founders Matthew Salsamendi and James Boehm. Beam was built around a low-latency protocol called FTL—Faster Than Light—which cut streaming delays to less than a second. This allowed viewers to interact with streams in near real-time, voting on choices, triggering sound effects, or even influencing gameplay if the game integrated with Mixer’s SDK.
In August 2016, Microsoft acquired Beam for an undisclosed amount, integrating it into the Xbox division. By March 2017, Xbox One consoles were updated to include Beam broadcasting. Just two months later, in May 2017, Microsoft rebranded Beam as Mixer after learning their original name couldn’t be used globally. Mixer rolled out new features, including multi-person co-hosting—up to four streams combined on a single channel—and a companion app called Mixer Create. Microsoft also put Mixer directly onto the Xbox One dashboard with a dedicated tab for curated streams.
By 2019, Mixer was available in 21 languages, competing directly with Twitch, YouTube Gaming, and Facebook Gaming. Mixer offered unique viewer engagement features. The virtual currency “Sparks” rewarded people for watching, letting them buy interactive buttons on streams. A second paid currency, “Embers,” was introduced for animated chat effects called “Skills,” similar to Twitch’s Bits. In April 2019, Mixer added “Channel Progression,” a system that tracked a user’s engagement with a channel, unlocking special perks for loyal viewers. They also deployed an auto-moderation tool called CATbot, which filtered chat content with adjustable strictness based on a viewer’s rank in Channel Progression.
Despite these features, Mixer was struggling to compete with Twitch’s huge audience. The turning point came when Microsoft decided to sign Ninja to an exclusive contract. Ninja’s wife and manager, Jessica Blevins, said that the couple had grown frustrated with Twitch’s restrictions on expanding Ninja’s brand beyond gaming. Citing “toxicity” in Twitch’s community and creative limits imposed by his contract, Ninja became open to alternatives. On July 31, 2019, the exclusive Mixer deal was announced. Major gaming news outlets including The Verge, Variety, and GamesIndustry.biz reported on the shock move.
Ninja’s debut on Mixer brought an immediate surge in attention. According to a Streamlabs and Newzoo report, Mixer saw a massive 188% quarter-over-quarter increase in unique hours of content streamed after Ninja’s arrival. But there was a surprise: despite the surge in streamed content, Mixer’s percentage of concurrent viewers actually dropped by 11.7% in the third quarter of 2019. This showed that while more creators were going live, audiences weren’t following in the same numbers.
The move set off a wave of speculation about the future of streaming contracts. Only a few months later, in October 2019, another top Twitch streamer, Shroud, signed a similar exclusive agreement to join Mixer. Shortly after, KingGothalion, a prominent Destiny streamer, also jumped ship. The same month, both Mixer co-founders—James Boehm and Matthew Salsamendi—left Microsoft, which fueled even more rumors about the platform’s direction and internal challenges.
Mixer tried to keep its momentum. In October 2019, it dropped the monthly price of subscriptions from $5.99 to $4.99 to match Twitch’s price point. This allowed viewers to support their favorite streamers on Mixer for the same amount as on Twitch, with access to exclusive emoticons and supporter badges in chat.
Meanwhile, Microsoft was betting big on Mixer’s deep Xbox integration and unique interactivity to set it apart from the competition. Viewers could directly impact gameplay, and high-level engagement was tracked and rewarded through “Channel Progression.” But as 2019 ended, it was clear Mixer continued to struggle with scaling up its user base and building a sustainable viewer community.
On June 22, 2020, less than a year after Ninja’s high-profile move, Microsoft announced it would shut down Mixer entirely. The official reason: Mixer’s inability to scale in comparison to competitors like Twitch and YouTube Gaming. Microsoft arranged a deal with Facebook Inc., now Meta Platforms, to redirect Mixer users to Facebook Gaming. Microsoft’s own statement said they’d begun transitioning users to Facebook Gaming by July 22, 2020, the official date Mixer went offline. After that date, mixer.com redirected to Facebook Gaming, and all outstanding Mixer subscriptions or currency balances were converted to Microsoft Store credit.
For streamers who had signed exclusive deals—like Ninja and Shroud—Microsoft released their contracts, making them free agents. In August 2020, Ninja streamed on YouTube before ultimately returning to Twitch, and Shroud also re-signed an exclusive agreement with Twitch. KingGothalion chose to transition to Facebook Gaming, following the new partnership.
Mixer’s technical innovations, like sub-second latency and interactive SDKs, were not enough to overcome Twitch’s massive network and entrenched community. At its peak, Mixer was featured at industry events such as Penny Arcade Expo 2018 in Seattle, with a large booth showcasing its Xbox integration and interactivity demos. But market share data showed that despite millions spent on exclusive contracts and product development, Mixer remained a distant fourth in viewership behind Twitch, YouTube, and Facebook Gaming.
Microsoft’s acquisition of Beam in 2016 came just months after Beam won the TechCrunch Disrupt Startup Battlefield, earning $50,000 in equity-free funding—a sign of early promise that ultimately could not be realized at scale. When Mixer shut down, its staff were transferred to the Microsoft Teams division, and Meta Platforms acquired the rights to Mixer’s trademarks.
Today, attempting to visit mixer.com just redirects to Facebook Gaming, a silent marker of the platform’s fate. Ninja’s move to Mixer is still debated in online forums: some say it was the catalyst for streamers demanding more control and better contracts, while others argue it showed the limits of platform exclusivity in building a sustainable audience. The biggest unresolved question is exactly how much Microsoft paid for exclusive rights to top streamers, since no contract figures have been disclosed—fueling ongoing speculation about the true cost of the great streaming wars.