Superstar gamer Michael ‘Shroud’ Grzesiek is leaving Twitch to take up an exclusive streaming deal with Mixer

Streaming wars: Twitch vs Mixer

Amazon’s Twitch is a big deal. According to Investopedia it is worth $3.79 billion, and its e-sports audience is expected to grow to 589 million by next year.

The platform was bought for $1 billion from Google 5 years ago, and has grown exponentially since then. Twitch is out-performing big names in streaming including ESPN, and is catching up fast even to Netflix and Apple.

An estimated 15 million people use Twitch daily. In contrast, Microsoft’s Mixer has around 69,000 streamers.

However, size isn’t everything and Mixer is growing in line with a better user experience, more interactive functions and a fresh new take on streaming and gaming.

Is this a good move for Shroud?

This is the second high profile partner to move away from Twitch, who lost Tyler ‘Ninja’ Blevins, also defecting over to Mixer earlier this year. Ninja reported that he made the move having felt that Twitch ‘didn’t respect his wishes’ and that his brand had outgrown the gaming world.

Shroud is said to make over $100k/month from streaming subscribers alone. With the power of the Twitch platform behind him, and having experience as a pro Cloud9 gamer, he has built a seriously strong following.

Big name streamers are looking to differentiate themselves from the crowds using Twitch, perhaps seeing the opportunity to stand out and take a breather from the intense competition generated by multitudes of competitors.

Mixer has seen some impressive growth, with Streamlabs reporting a viewer increase of 195% last year, and set to keep rising.

What does Shroud have to say about the move to Mixer?

Making his first statement via video yesterday, Shroud has said that he felt the change was ‘the best move for my career, straight up’. Whilst he has admitted to being a little nervous prior to his Mixer debut, he says ‘after the first day, I’m chilling, but I just knew 100% this is it.’

What will Shroud’s 7 million Twitch followers make of the move?

It seems like at least some of Shroud’s followers are sticking right there beside him. His Mixer channel followers are growing rapidly, with his first stream bringing 78,000 viewers to the platform.

His page also offers a free subscription, which will last for the duration of his first month on Mixer. In fact, Shroud’s first big stream hit a bit of a stumbling block when Modern Warfare froze, a result of the server’s crashing under the weight of the huge volume of followers.

His video received 5 million views in the space of 10 hours, and the move certainly shows that Microsoft are not afraid of playing hardball.

With this second big superstar leaving Twitch for Mixer, it seems that their star really is on the rise. Subscriber loyalty is showing through, although there is no reason viewers can’t use both Twitch and Mixer simultaneously, but time will tell how Twitch are going to respond.