Ninja's Journey: Twitch, Mixer, YouTube and beyond

Tyler "Ninja" Blevins is one of the internet's biggest icons, and his journey to stardom is filled with stories. Even though Ninja is known for Fortnite, he joined the gaming community as a professional Halo 3 player and played for teams like Cloud9 and Team Liquid.

---

Ninja's Streaming Journey

It wasn't until 2011 that Ninja started streaming. He played a variety of games and got on the Battle Royale train in 2017 when he began playing PUBG. He even won the PUBG Gamescom Invitational Squads event as a member of Luminosity Gaming.

Ninja started playing Fortnite in late 2017 and his popularity exploded, along with that of the game. In September 2017, Ninja had around 500,000 subscribers on Twitch. By March 2018, he had over 2 million subscribers. He also broke the record for most concurrent viewers on a non-event stream when he played the game with Drake, Travis Scott and Juju Smith-Schuster. At its peak, the stream had more than 628,000 viewers.

Ninja then hosted his very own Fortnite tournament in Las Vegas sometime in 2018. The prize money from the matches he won was donated to charity. He broke his own streaming record with this event as an estimated 667,000 people watched the event concurrently.

Ninja was able to use his huge earnings to host the event. It was estimated that he was earning at least $500,000 a month. This number didn't even factor in sponsorships and other income.

---

Moving to Mixer

In 2019 Ninja made the official announcement that he was moving to Mixer.

The next chapter,https://t.co/lvn9KBjEYq pic.twitter.com/tljVgyM3bG

— Ninja (@Ninja) August 1, 2019

In an interview with The Verge, Ninja's wife and manager said that Twitch had been stalling Ninja's growth, especially outside of gaming, saying:

"It really seemed like he was kind of losing himself and his love for streaming."

Ninja's viewership on Mixer was much lower than it had been on Twitch. However, his contract with Microsoft made up for lost revenue from subscriptions. Despite bringing in streamers like Ninja, Mixer ultimately failed and decided to shut down in July 2020.

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 Aftermath

Ninja kept streaming on Mixer until July when it was announced the platform would be shut down. He said that he loved the community that was built on Mixer and asserted that his concern would always be for his viewers.

I love my community and what we built together on Mixer. I have some decisions to make and will be thinking about you all as I make them.

— Ninja (@Ninja) June 22, 2020

Now a free agent, Ninja is free to explore all the options available to him. He most recently streamed on YouTube as a sort of test run.

Ninja has recently been playing Riot Games’ latest shooter Valorant and has surprised many fans with how quickly he was able to pick up the core mechanics of the game. It remains to be seen how he does in the Valorant esports scene.

Whatever the future holds for Ninja, however, one thing looks certain: his future is bright.