Microsoft announced today that the company will be shutting down its streaming site Mixer on July 22 and will partner with Facebook Gaming moving forward.
The shutdown starts today, with a transition plan laid out by Microsoft for Mixer streamers. Mixer Partners will be granted partner status with Facebook Gaming, and the platform will honour and “match all existing Partner agreements as closely as possible,” according to the blog detailing the change.
Several big-name streamers, such as announced he would be moving to Facebook; earlier this year, he signed a deal to stream exclusively on Mixer.
It also appears some Mixer streamers, employees, and partners weren’t given a heads up about the shutdown. Kotaku has reached out to Mixer and affected streamers for more information.
(Update: June 22, 3:57 PM) About an hour after the news broke, Ninja tweeted his first public comment about the shutdown. He explained he now has “…some decisions to make..” and didn’t give any more details about his streaming plans moving forward.
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
Currently, many of the streamers on Mixer’s front page are streamers worrying about their futures and trying to figure out their next steps in real-time. Some I’ve seen are asking their chat for advice on which service to move to next. Many seem angry about the lack of warning.
The Verge reports that many of these big streamers, such as Ninja, will be free to return to Twitch or go to another platform. Vivek Sharma, the head of Facebook Gaming, told The Verge the decision on where Mixer streamers go next will be “up to them and their priorities.”
In Mixer’s blog, titled “The Next Step For Mixer,” the company explained the thinking behind the shutdown:
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. 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. To better serve our community’s needs, we’re teaming up with Facebook to enable the Mixer community to transition to Facebook Gaming. This is a key part of a broader effort that Xbox and Facebook Gaming are embarking on, bringing new experiences and opportunities to the entire world of gaming.
Mixer will continue to operate until July 22. At that point, all apps and sites connected to Mixer will redirect to Facebook Gaming.
Comments
18 responses to “Microsoft Is Shutting Down Mixer, Moving Streaming To Facebook”
This is really sudden, I wonder if Mixer was just unpopular and bleeding money or maybe Facebook paid a lot of money.
Still seems weird that Ninja can just go straight back to twitch if he wants, thought he would have some sort of non-compete clause in his contract even though Microsoft is closing Mixer.
Letting them out of any non compete clauses sounds more like MS being a good guy now that it’s shutting down. Fair enough.
The company is thriving under Satya Nadella. Ballmer was a train wreck.
Rumour has it Mixer had to buy out Ninja for $30mil and Shroud for $10mil making them free agents now.
I don’t know if a non-compete clause has any validity if you shut down, since you’re no longer there to compete against?
God I hate Microsoft when it comes to many of their purchases, they run it just long enough to kill it.
Mixer had to run long enough to be a viable product when Twitch inevitably fucked up and caused an exodus, and until then focus on getting itself on as many platforms as possible.
Instead they kill it in what, 2 years?
Well at least Facebook are stepping in to fill the void. Facebook makes everything better, right? Right? Guys? *awkward cough from the back of the room*
Apparently, they literally only had to wait another week or so. I don’t follow Twitch but my partner does, and apparently there’s something of a purge going on, the last couple days.
A #metoo style thing, only this time around streamers ‘grooming’ minors in private chats. Lots of folks coming forward about leches and pedos, lots of bloodletting, vague statements from Twitch (check their twitter) promising to address the situation.
Seems there’s an infected sore that’s been festering under all the fame and attention for some of these folks (which… well. How do you think the film and music industries got the way they are).
Alternatively, Microsoft did notice the problems at Twitch and realised that they aren’t spending enough money on moderation to prevent that kind of thing happening on their platform.
If Mixer is not yet profitable and could become a liability for Microsoft as a whole, then it could make sense to cut it loose.
I did have that thought… but it’s going over to facebook? And it’s not like XBL wasn’t already a clusterfuck of utterly unmanageable abuse… Still. Wouldn’t be surprised if it was all just too much, throw up hands. Especially when having to come up with a reason to reject anyone ousted on Twitch when they attempt to switch to Mixr.
I’m just glad the thing is dead and hopefully won’t be an annoying feature to skip past on future dashboards, if I ever get around to getting one of the next-gen versions.
I’ll give Facebook some credit, theyre not perfect but they have a much more robust system for handling child protection issues than Twitch or Mixer.. and the platform is much better understood by parents and law enforcement.
Any future scandals would be Facebook’s problem. In contrast, Xbox Live makes a lot of money for Microsoft. It makes sense to spend money to keep it profitable.
It’s obvious why they’re going to Facebook; they’re neither Amazon nor Google, both of whom are Xcloud competitors
I can’t believe spending millions upon millions of dollars poaching Twitch’s biggest names wasn’t sustainable long term.
Both ninja and shroud have won big out of this. They can go back to twitch and they still get the money in their contract with mixer.
Apparently Facebook offered them close to double their mixer contract but they refused insisting they be paid out so they can be free agents.
Given Mixer’s recent failure to capitalise on people staying at home because of the covids, (they gained 0 market share versus Twitch seeing a 170% jump in viewers) this isn’t surprising.
Mixer seemed like a bad idea from the start, so it’s not surprising it would shut down eventually. On the bright side, at least we won’t have to deal with that dumb Mixer tab on the XBone dashboard anymore.
Holy shit. 0? Nothing at all? How could that be possible? Even Zoom, a total unknown before this, became a household name. Microsoft, what are you doing?
Yeah last thing I want to do is use Facebook more. Especially not for watching people play games. Its shady asf.
It seems like the between the lines text here is:
“We bought out these big name streamers in the hopes that they would bring across their entire viewership and bolster our user numbers but that didn’t happen so we’re cutting our losses.”
I can’t say I’m surprised at all. The idea that you could buy an instant viewership was flawed from the start because most people aren’t on the platform for the streamer, they’re watching the streamer because they’re on the platform.