What Ninja's Wife Jessica Blevins Really Thinks About Twitch

It's now been over a month since Ninja left Twitch behind in favor of Mixer and what we presume are greener ($) pastures. But Ninja's departure wasn't without controversy on Twitch's end, and it seems at the time, Ninja's wife Jessica had a lot to say about the way Twitch treated her husband.

First, a bit of backstory.

After Ninja departed Twitch, the platform took over his page and used it to promote other streamers. The idea might have been pitched like this: "Hey, Ninja's page still gets a lot of traffic, and he's not using it. Why don't we funnel those people somewhere else?" That's exactly what Twitch did. Unfortunately, one of the accounts Twitch promoted at Ninja's former URL happened to be one broadcasting porn, leading some out-of-the-loop Ninja fans to see some things they weren't quite ready for.

Twitch claimed it was an experiment gone wrong. Everyone could see this "experiment" was limited solely to Ninja's URL. Twitch nonetheless apologized for the porn thing, but not for commandeering Ninja's old page. Twitch eventually put Ninja's Twitch content back where it belonged.

But not before Ninja's wife, Jessica Blevins, offered up her two cents as to what Twitch was doing in the wake of her husband's departure.

"Twitch is doing PR control right now but it seems their intent from the beginning was to try to kill [the] Ninja brand," she reportedly said. "They say promoting other channels on his page wasn't of ill-intent, but here is a Twitch co-founder saying RIP with a winky face to Tyler's transition. Petty."

That is a pretty bold claim. Jessica Blevins is basically stating that Twitch hosted a bunch of other streamers at twitch.tv/NINJA in order to dilute and harm his brand elsewhere, and that would be a tough thing to prove, except for the fact that Twitch took unprecedented action when it "borrowed" Ninja's URL for the purposes of promoting other streamers. We're not aware of the platform doing that at any other point in time, which either makes it a conveniently timed experiment or, as Blevins stated, a "petty" move.

And that's not all Jessica Blevins had to say about her husband's time at Twitch and his future with Mixer.

In an interview with Business Insider, Mrs. Blevins dished on the factors that led to Ninja's departure from Twitch, and what Microsoft has done differently that still — to this day — makes her feel good about the decision.

"With the wording of how that [Twitch] contract was going, he wouldn't have been able to grow his brand much outside of gaming," Jessica said.

Not only that, the couple took Tyler's mental well-being into consideration. How happy was he streaming on Twitch? As it turns out, not very.

"I could tell you, as his wife, the last few months on Twitch, he just didn't seem like the Ninja that I knew," she said. "He didn't seem as enthusiastic, as loud, as hyped-up about wins and motivated to stream. It really seemed like he was kind of losing himself and his love for streaming."

And then, like the perfect match in a romantic comedy, Mixer appeared to make Tyler and Jessica Blevin forget all about Twitch and how it had mistreated them. The two weren't able to hammer out a new deal with Twitch despite months of negotiations. Signing on the dotted line with Mixer took just a few weeks.

"This is the first time we really felt like this is what's right for the brand," Jessica said, adding that the move to Mixer "was a leap of faith, and Microsoft's been nothing but amazing to us."

It makes you wonder: will other Twitch streamers hear the good word about Ninja's experience with Mixer and try to get a deal themselves? We know that some have expressed interest — jokingly in some cases — about leaving Twitch for its rival. Dr Disrespect famously said he'd leave Twitch if he got a deal like Ninja's, even though no one at the time had details on the deal Ninja got.

It's also possible, though, that Mixer signing Ninja to an exclusivity deal is a one-off thing. He is, for the most part, a family-friendly streamer who can go on daytime talk shows and prime-time singing competitions and appear wholesome. There aren't many other streamers who can lay claim to that space.

As soon as we hear anything new about Ninja and his deal with Mixer, we'll fill you in.