What happened to Mixer? Understanding why Twitch's competitor shut down

Mixer was Microsoft's answer to live-streaming platforms. It was set up as a direct competitor for websites like Twitch.

Famously known for poaching prominent content creators such as Shroud and Ninja, Mixer shut down back in 2020. There is no easy answer to why this happened. Factors such as corporate mismanagement, competition for better alternatives, and failing numbers are all possible explanations.

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Tracing Mixer's downfall: From Twitch's big rival to being shut down in four years

By all accounts, Microsoft had big things planned for Mixer. Having acquired it in 2016 (it was then called Beam), the company tried to integrate it into its pre-existing game-related products.

Users were able to watch livestreams directly from the Xbox game bar. They were also able to buy games played by creators with a click of a button, thanks to the Microsoft Store integration.

Microsoft seemed to pull out all the stops to make it a success, paying ludicrous amounts of money to established streamers so that they could join the platform.

Just a year before Mixer's eventual demise, gaming icons Ninja and Shroud joined the platform for lots of money. The former reportedly got a deal worth $30 million, while the latter got one worth around $10 million. While neither number was verified, the gaming community was fairly sure there was a lot of money involved.

Despite these acquisitions, Mixer shut its doors by July 2020, roughly four years after it was launched. The platform's co-founder, Matt Salsamendi, seemed to agree with the decision, telling CNBC:

"Live video makes no sense from a unit economics standpoint."

Most industry experts seem to think Mixer failed due to its bottom line. Although interest in livestreaming increased during the coronavirus pandemic, StreamElements noted that the platform showed minimal growth of about 0.2% between April 2019 and April 2020. Meanwhile, Twitch showed a growth of about 100%, and Facebook Gaming had over 200% growth.

Shroud and Ninja clearly could not carry an entire platform on their backs.

A few months ago, Ninja revealed some of the problems he had with Mixer on a 100 Thieves podcast. The blue-haired Fortnite legend explained that whenever anyone had suggestions for the platform, the management would have to defer back to Microsoft. This meant it took too much time, and nothing concrete could be done.

Ninja said:

"We would talk to Mixer and be like, 'Hey, this what really is preventing people from coming onto the platform.' And they'll be like, 'We gotta go to Microsoft. So it'll be like a year before we can make any changes.'"

The disconnect between users and management appears to be another big problem that took the platform down. However, Ninja didn't stop there and discussed how the website itself needed several tweaks.

Nadeshot, CEO of 100 Thieves, made a good point on the podcast:

"It just makes you wonder what their priorities actually were... Was it actually supposed to be a streaming platform? Or was it means to an end to expand the Microsft business."

Besides failing numbers, the alleged lack of impetus from the parent company to make substantial changes to retain viewership eventually led Mixer to trail behind its competitors. The deficits became too big for Microsoft to keep bankrolling the servers, and they had to shut it down.

Despite so many shortcomings, the platform had many merits. The faster-than-light or FTL protocol was revolutionary in terms of how low the latency was in the chat services. Chat interactions had almost no lag, meaning creators could talk to the audience in real time, making for a much better experience.

Other innovative features such as HypeZone, which switched between streamers as they played battle royale titles such as PUBG and Fortnite, allowed viewers to discover new creators.

Posts on forums and social media websites (like the one above) are a testament to the fact that Microsoft's platform had many good features before being shut down.