Shroud's Move To Mixer May Have Been A Mistake

Remember when Ninja moved to Mixer? It was kind of a big deal, but he's doing just fine. He is, after all, the world's most recognizable streamer. But what about Shroud? Michael "Shroud" Grzesiek commanded one of the largest audiences on Twitch before announcing he, too, was going to make the move to Mixer. As it turns out, that audience didn't follow him.

In a new report from Streammetrics, we learned that Shroud's subscriber base has shrunk significantly. In October, he had 718,000 unique viewers on his Twitch channel. November marked his full time move to Mixer, and his channel there hosted just 231,000 unique viewers. That means roughly 32% of Shroud's Twitch fans made the trip with him to Mixer. That's a pretty substantial drop.

Back when he first announced his new loyalty to Microsoft's up and coming streaming platform, many outlets (including ours) questioned if this would be a financially viable move — Twitch boasts the bigger audience, and more viewership means more cash for streamers. It's theorized that the only reason big name streamers like Shroud and Ninja would switch to Mixer is because Microsoft enticed them with lucrative deals.

While no one has revealed how much money Mixer shelled out in order to gain exclusive rights to Shroud and Ninja, we wonder if it was worth the blow to streamers' respective subscriber bases. When it comes to Shroud, Streammetrics reports, the news isn't all that dire. In November, 47% of Shroud's subscriber base decided that they could give Mixer a try. This audience still doesn't measure up to the hundreds of thousands that flocked to Shroud's Twitch channel, but it's not too shabby.

Notably, 127,000 people — half of Shroud's November viewers — were totally new to Mixer. This is likely a fact that satisfied Microsoft. Acquiring big name streamers was likely a strategy to attract people to the platform, which lives in the shadow of Twitch. Right now, Mixer is trying to build a bigger user base, distinguishing itself from Twitch by emphasizing interactive features and its faster than light protocol. There may be less people using Mixer, but Shroud has effectively introduced over 100,000 new people to the platform.

Shroud's Mixer move has definitely been a win for Microsoft. Has it been a win for Shroud, though? We honestly can't say right now.