Ninja is back on Twitch — for the moment, at least. Tyler “Ninja” Blevins started streaming Fortnite on his Twitch account Wednesday morning, nearly a year to the day after he left the service for an exclusivity deal with Mixer. It’s the first time that Blevins has streamed on Twitch since leaving.
With Mixer shutting down last month, Ninja has been released from his contract and is free to stream where he’d like. So far, he seems to be testing the waters and showing streaming services that he’s still capable of pulling in impressive numbers. His Twitch stream neared 100,000 viewers just 15 minutes after it went live. His debut stream on YouTube last month now has more than 4 million views.
There’s no indication that Blevins has an exclusivity deal with Twitch or any other platform at this point. After signing to Mixer, Ninja kicked off a contract battle as the biggest platforms competed to lock down top streamers. With Mixer and Microsoft’s big budget out of the picture, it’s not clear how much that’ll continue, but there’s still huge competition in the space. YouTube and Facebook Gaming have grown significantly over the past year, and with no place he’s required to be, Blevins seems to be checking out his options.
