Microsoft to kill Mixer, transition to Facebook Gaming partnership - The UpStream

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Microsoft to kill Mixer, transition to Facebook Gaming partnership

posted Monday Jun 22, 2020 by Scott Ertz

Microsoft to kill Mixer, transition to Facebook Gaming partnership

Since Microsoft bought Beam and rebranded it Mixer, they have fought to compete with the more established services, like Twitch. While they have worked to attract users, such as signing Ninja to the platform, their moves have not been as effective as they had hoped. In that time, even Facebook has gotten in on the game and surpassed Mixer for active users. Unfortunately for those who are full-time content creators on Mixer, the road is coming to an end.

With this announcement, we see the end of Microsoft's first-party ambitions for videogame streaming. Microsoft said that they learned the amount of time required to maintain and grow an active streaming community was out of scale with the amount of time available. This is likely because of the company's shift to focusing on a different type of streaming with Project xCloud.

With the shutdown of Mixer coming in just a month's time, the company is partnering with Facebook Gaming to transition its community. The two brands have worked together to make the transition easy. Facebook has a dedicated transition plan, though the move is obviously not required. However, a lot of perks will transfer with content creators, such as partner status and monetization. Embers and Sparks will be worth double their value for the next month, and any unspent or outstanding subscriptions will be translated into gift cards.

After the cutoff, Mixer.com will redirect to fb.gg, which is Facebook's dedicated gaming hub, and Mixer apps will encourage viewers to follow their streamers over to Facebook. However, the transition is not required - apparently for anyone. That includes the streamers who were paid large sums of money to move from Twitch to Mixer, such as Ninja. According to reports from people involved in the move, exclusive partners were paid their entire contract and, as of midnight last night, are free to pursue new homes at any streaming platform.

For those of us here, we preferred Mixer to other platforms. The latency, especially on chat, was far less than Twitch, which made interaction between the streamer and community more natural. It is a shame to see the platform go, but it was only a matter of time before one of the competitors would tap out.

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