Microsoft’s Mixer closes down and merges with Facebook Gaming

Making esports news and headlines today, Mixer, Microsoft’s streaming platform, is officially closing down. The streaming giant will work with Facebook to join its streaming platform, Facebook Gaming. Mixer streamers and users will move over to Facebook Gaming as part of the merge.

Mixer closing is a huge blow to esports. After Microsoft acquired Beam in 2017, the brand didn’t gain notoriety until last summer. When Fortnite professional Tyler “Ninja” Blevins was contracted on August 1 to join Mixer, the company started gaining popularity globally. With the streaming wars beginning for different brands to finally take on Twitch, losing a competitor shows that streaming platforms besides Twitch are struggling.

Mixer Partners, streamers, and community – today, we've got some very big news for you.

While we’ve decided to close the operations side of Mixer, we're officially partnering with @FacebookGaming and we're cordially inviting all of you to join.

? https://t.co/E1eMDvjYQb pic.twitter.com/554hHAXfaB

— Mixer (@WatchMixer) June 22, 2020

Mixer Closing for Facebook Gaming

Although streaming platform Mixer closes down its operations side, Facebook Gaming continues its growth. Because of this merge, Facebook’s gaming community will grow even further with one less major platform to go to.

Mixer will also transition its own streamers easily to Facebook Gaming with similar perks and statuses. Mixer streamers who had Partner status and open monetization directly receive those benefits on Facebook Gaming. In addition, users with remaining Embers or Sparks, Microsoft’s donation and support utility, and Mixer Pro subscriptions will receive Xbox gift cards for their outstanding balances.

The Facebook Gaming Mixer merge will finalize on July 22. Until then, Mixer continues to be available for use. Allowing it to remain open for one month lets Mixer streamers take their time to transition and inform fans.

“Ultimately, the success of Partners and streamers on Mixer is dependent on our ability to scale the platform for them as quickly and broadly as possible,” stated Mixer. “It became clear that the time needed to grow our own livestreaming community to scale was out of measure with the vision and experiences that Microsoft and Xbox want to deliver for gamers now, so we’ve decided to close the operations side of Mixer and help the community transition to a new platform.”

Streaming Platforms Now

Esports consultant Rod “Slasher” Breslau reports that Facebook Gaming hoped to take Ninja and Michael “Shroud” Grzesiek along with Mixer. His sources say that Facebook Gaming intended to double the contracts Ninja and Shroud initially signed to join Mixer. But the two streamers denied the offer. Now that Mixer closed, Ninja and Shroud are free agents and will likely return to Twitch.

Sources: 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. Ninja made ~$30M from Mixer, and Shroud made ~$10M

Ninja and Shroud are now free agents

— Rod "4475 SR & Immortal peak" Breslau (@Slasher) June 22, 2020

Though Microsoft’s streaming platform never received a large amount of viewership, it was always seen as a strong brand. Mixer’s closing means Twitch’s control over the streaming community will grow even stronger unless Facebook Gaming can catch up. YouTube Gaming is also a major player in the streamer space thanks to its simple video conversion and popularity.

This Mixer close comes as a huge surprise to the esports industry who expected the company to stick around much longer. It’ll be exciting to see what Facebook Gaming does with this momentum and increase in streamers.

Written by Justin Amin