Ninja streamed on Twitch yesterday for the first time since Mixer died
He's already reached Twitch Affiliate... again
In what might be considered an unsurprising move, Ninja was back on Twitch yesterday - if only for a brief couple of hours. He played a bit of Fortnite's new Joyride update with Dr Lupo in his first stream on the platform since he left for Microsoft's now-dead Mixer last year. The popular lad had managed to rack up 100,000 viewers when I caught part of the stream early on yesterday, so his audience is clearly still there, though it doesn't seem like he'll be pledging himself to Twitch again just yet.
Here he is in all his blue-haired glory doing what he apparently does best, playing Fortnite:
Ninja signed a $50 million deal to stream exclusively on Mixer before it shut down in June, leaving him a free agent to take his Fortnite #content elsewhere. He's set up over on YouTube for the moment, doing daily videos for his whopping 24 million subscribers.
While the stream appeared to be a bit of a spur-of-the-moment thing, he tweeted shortly after that he'd already managed to hit Twitch Affiliate status, which is basically what you need on the platform to be able to make money from it. It probably helps that he's still got nearly 15 million followers on Twitch, mind, and with so many people excited to watch him play video games generally, I imagine he can afford to play the field for a little bit.
You never know, maybe this is the start of his dramatic comeback to Twitch after all. Being an Affiliate is one step down from becoming a Twitch Partner, which he was before he abandoned ship. He'd need to apply for Partner status again, though, to get all the perks that come with it, and Twitch would have to decide whether or not they want him back. His follower count screams, "Yes," to me, but perhaps they've yet to forgive him for defecting to Mixer.