All right. Welcome.

Please leave your.

Message.

For.

Afk with Ninja. It's time for another solo dolo, yolo, bolo, trollo. Did I say solo? Episode of AFK with Ninja. Today, I am laying it all out there of how the mixer deal went down and how I navigated through the ups and downs. How much money did I make? What did I think when it failed? Did I want to quit? We're getting into all of it. Stick around.

I'm just going to literally jump straight into it if you don't want to answer it.

No, I got it, dude. I got it. Fucking send.

It, dude. Mixer deal. How did you first hear about Mixer?

I always knew Mixer existed. It was always just, again, it was always like nothing could ever compete with Twitch. You look at the product and the deliverables and what a company and a website has to offer for a live streaming platform side of things. It was one of the things, where dude, it's just so big and there's no reason to get anywhere else. I always did Mixer, but it was always just, again, it was such a small platform. I was like, Oh, yeah, this is Microsoft's little baby. Cool, they wanted to have it. Again, I never really did any crazy deep dive into Mixer prior to when we were like, Okay, well, in case Twitch doesn't come with something that complements what we think we're worth, let's do some research and let's look around. So immediately my team was like, Well, of course, we can always Mixer this Microsoft's company. And after that, I started watching a bunch of streams, interacting in the chat, taking a look at the product, looking at the top viewership amongst what numbers were people pulling? And of course, nothing could hold the candle to Twitch on the size aspect, right?

They really just had the entire community and the genre and a deadlock. But I did love it, man. I loved the embers and the sparks. It was a brilliant idea. The chat interaction was... Twitch couldn't even compete or even come close. It does now, I think. But even then, the chat interaction and the interaction of the interface with Mixer was just too good. It was too good. You could... I still have this viewer that I had when I made the deal. Her name was Cheryl or blizzard818, I think is what it was. But blizzard, I know, is the name for sure. She would always throw 1,000 embers at me, which is like $10, and it would be a shark. She would do like, we call it Cheryl the shark. The shark would just eat embers and it would pop up through the stream and just eat these little diamonds. It would go through the video and go through the chat and it would pop up in the chat as well. Kind of like a super chat on YouTube and what it is now on Twitch too. But it was just awesome. I loved it. It was so interactive.

It was so fun. It was literally one of the reasons I kept streaming so much was because I was like, Dude, I'm still having so much fun interacting with the chat. And unfortunately, they had a lot of negatives too that-.

The good old email sign-up.

Yes, dude, I've talked about this a lot, but it's always good to have it on the podcast, so it'll be up and out there forever and have everything in one space. But one of the biggest Ls that ultimately... I mean, dude, I don't want to say that has led to Mixer's downfall, but I will say there are things that if they were implemented in place and we took our time and didn't rush the announcement, and if Mixer actually could have acted on these things quickly without getting approval from 100 other people up at the Microsoft side of things, it would have been much better. It would have been much quicker. But unfortunately, it's the same reason that it takes a billion years for something to change on YouTube's streaming platform, because everything has to go through Google and it has to be approved to millions and millions and tens of millions of other people that also stream. So it's just not as simple as it should be or as it could be. And if you guys knew... I mean, when I was streaming on Mixer, I think I was pulling like... My first stream ever was 360,000 viewers.

It was crazy, massive. I think that day alone they had over 5-10 million concurrent people or unique people come onto the website. And the retain, dude, I guarantee you they retained maybe 5 % of those. I guarantee you, 5 % of those people were the only ones that made an account because you needed a Hotmail account.

Dude, I watched you and just didn't make an account because it was-It was.

Hard, bro. I guess I'm not watching you again. Yeah, man. You want to talk about removing as many barriers to get people into something. If I have a gambling website or if I have just any website, dude, it's going to be create an account. It's going to be any email, put in the password, don't care what it is. I hate when people are like, I hate PlayStation Network. I hate because you can't have multiple numbers. You can't have more than one or nine. If it's 193, it's three numbers in a row, can't have it. I hate that. Let me make my pass or whatever I want it to be. If I want it to be 98654321-12345, question mark, question mark, question mark, asterisk, that's what it should be. But it's like only have one symbol, can't have this many numbers, things like that. It's terrible. Because that alone will turn off some people from making an account. But dude, you needed this Hotmail account. And even if you had a Hotmail account, I had every single one of my family members, including my wife, need to reach out to Mixer Support to verify their email so that they actually got the email verification to make the username.

It was abysmal. It was a nightmare. And we told them for months. I was like, Guys, I understand your Microsoft. I understand your Hotmail, your Outlook. But please, just let people make whatever they want. And they're like, No. It's just like it's so ingrained in what the website is and what they're trying to do that they wouldn't allow Gmail or any other fucking email. And dude, that was just one of their first biggest, just ginormous Ls. That was the most, in my opinion, one of the worst things that they just never changed because God knows how many people just never came back and never made an account. And if my entire family needs help and assistance by sending an email and reaching out to Mixer employees to log on to their account and have access to their account and create it, dude, one in 100 people are going to go out of their way to do that. It was just a huge, massive L. It was.

Reported by Forbes.

When.

Ninja signed with Mixer, Forbes said the multi-year contract, that it was worth between $20 and $30 million at 29 years old. Can you confirm or deny those allegations?

I won't say how much exactly, but I was so curious where they got that number from. That just also goes... It goes without saying. You can just never trust anyone... I'm trying to think of one, dude. Even the XQC deal, the $100 million deal, dude, it wasn't like 100 million cash. I would bet a large amount of money. There's nothing wrong with this, by the way. Not throwing shade at my boy, love my boy, Felix, wish nothing but the best for him and every streamer. But guaranteed that money was either something involved with gambling, money, steak money, steak percentage. It wasn't just all cash, and they made it seem like it was in the announcement. It's very misleading, right? Yeah, it's the same thing with the Mixer Forbes announcement. I don't know who leaked that to them. We were actually really pissed when the article came out because A, it was wrong, and B, we didn't want to- If you're going.

To do it, at least get it right.

Yeah, you know what I mean? Dude, come on. It was offensive.

You're off by 30.

Come on, folks. Come on, dude. What are you guys doing?

Can you say if it was all straight cash or if it was equity or.

Do you don't want to know? No, I'll say no. This was still, from what I know, one of the biggest legitimate business, one of the most legitimate exclusive streaming deals still so far. It wasn't chopped up into equity or anything like that. It was just a raw deal.

Raw, good old, got to hit 100 hours a week.

Yep. Dude, I also streamed 300 hours a week, though. I'm sorry, not hours a week, 300 hours a month. I was, dude, this is another thing I was saying. I just made that a minute, I don't know. I know... I did, but I'm going to dive a little bit further into this. There were some people that said it was a money grab, a cash grab. I wanted this streamed platform and this deal to make so much sense and to work more than anyone, probably more than Mixer did. I have a huge... It's not an imposter syndrome, but it's like if somebody pays me a certain amount of money, I want them to get with their... I'm not this person that's like, get the bag and get out. I want it to freaking work. And the proof is in the pudding. The proof is literally there. My requirement was 100 hours a month. I streamed 300 hours a month for a year straight, which is how long I was there. It was for a year before it shut down. I was streaming my ass off. It was not for lack of want. I did not want the reason that it failed to be that I just didn't, you know what I mean?

I did my minimum and I left or I stopped. I was live all the time playing Fortnite, grinding the shit out of it. And this is when Fortnite sucks too. So I really was just putting in the hours and it still failed.

Yeah, I think working for you, I can see it on the back end. I think people on the front end who are just a viewer can't really see it. But anytime we have a sponsored stream or anything sponsored or even with the podcast like, Oh, how did this do? Your first question is always like, What did the brand say? Are they happy? That is literally the first text as soon as you get off stream.

Same thing with my boy, Calby May, who was my first, he was my guy. I guess he would say he was like my Andre, but not an assistant. I don't know. He was my guy who got me all my brands and stuff like that back in the day when I was with Loaded, and it was the same way. I was always just like, What do they think? Tell me what's going on. What are they thinking? Are they happy? Do they want more? I know that it's on the contract, but if they want, I'll tweet out a couple more things. I always just wanted the brands to be happy because I just always wanted people to have the best experience if they were working with me. And I still am like that to this day.

I mean, Kelvin was more, I don't know him, but he sounds like more of an agent.

On that-Yeah, he was my agent for sure.

Yeah, I get it.

Love you, Calby.

We're going AFK with Ninja. What's he going to say? Afk with Ninja.

My Mods had monthly or bi-weekly meetings with Nixr to tell them all the things that they could have done to improve the platform. Not a single one of those things was changed or ever acted upon. That's number one. Number two, I had no idea this was happening. I think I found out three days before they announced it. I wasn't sitting here with weeks of preparation or even days of preparation leading up to the fall of it. It was like I got a call from my boy and he was like, Yeah, Tyler, this is big news. I got to tell you something. I was like, Can you tell me now? He's like, I have to wait. I have to tell you a couple of days. I was like- What? They called you. Yeah, I was like, Okay, thanks, dude. My heart's in my stomach, and I'm freaking out. And then we find out the day before they announced it and told everyone. This mixture is gone, dude. Are you streaming that day? Are you streaming that day? I have no idea, bro. I blacked out that entire year, to be completely honest. I think it wasn't COVID, but in general, I was in my that year of Mixer.

I was just in stream. I was in grind mode. I made that deal. I wanted to work. I was just in my base in Illinois streaming every day.

I think that's when we started when you went back to Twitch. Yeah. Was it late 2019, I think?

That's all a blur, bro.

I just remember being in my bedroom. That's all I remember.

Dark times. It's all a blur, bro. Literally the darkest of times, bro. There's a meme on the internet of like the year 2000 till 2018 or 2017. And it's just like, Wouldn't it be nice? I don't know, just some crazy happy-go-lucky meme. And it's Ryan Gosling, just happy and playing all of his little sexy roles where he's smiling and having a great time. And then it switches over to 2018 through 2023, and it's Ryan Gosling in Blade Runner. To where it switches over to the Ryan Costling and Blade Runner meme where he's just sad, depressed. Freaking, it's raining all the time. And memory reboot's playing. This has been the last five years, dude. It's just freaking... It's just changed, man.

How did you strategize afterwards as we wrap up here? After that downfall, Twitter was going crazy. You got paid out, but it's also like, What do I do next?

Yeah, again, the goal wasn't to just make the nut and leave. It was, or like the bag. Right, you know what I mean? Get your bag, dude. Again, we really genuinely wanted it to succeed. So when it didn't, we were like, Dude, holy shit. My first question was I was like, Oh, my God, is this my fault? And they were like, No. They just said, No, no more. No Maas mixer. So our goal was again, just to... I was like, Okay, we're still massive, we're still relevant. We're one of the biggest streamers in the world, if not the biggest gamer in the world. Let's strike another deal. Let's figure out where are we going to live. Our only two options really were... And I've talked about this before. This was where the birth of multistreaming, the idea of multistreaming, the baby child, the brainchild of Jess and I came in. We talked about... We had three options: YouTube, and this is in no particular order, YouTube, Twitch, or Multicast, and Stream everywhere, and Don't Take a Deal. Of course, we wanted to... Again, I wanted to go back to Twitch, dude. There's so much dark drama about this shit, man.

I loved Twitch so much, dude, and I felt like I got literally cucked, sucked, and fucked in every way. I just always felt like I was just not appreciated. It was tough. I always just felt like they were spitting in my face with the offers and things like that. But we ended up coming to an ice agreement where we're like, Okay, it's either this deal with Twitch or multicasting. Youtube was off the table. Youtube was never... I had never really... I think once I went through my dark phase on YouTube where I just started re-uploading old Fortnite videos for six months straight and then uploading APEX and League of Legends and just basically killing my channel, essentially, they were just like, Yeah, dude, this guy will never take you too seriously. At the end of the day, I don't fucking take you too seriously. I'll admit that. I'll say it out loud, bro. I don't care.

You do care. You just don't play the game.

I do care. I just don't care enough to play the game. I'm not going to sit there and read in fake intros for 20 minutes and clickbate people. That's because that's what it's about, bro. I don't have to clickbate on my Twitch channel, dude. I just fucking play games and I shit and everyone, and I'm entertaining. But to play the game of YouTube, bro, you just have to come up with the most click-baity titles and thumbnails, and you just have to bait people in. I don't know. I don't like it. I don't like it. I don't like it. I've had hundreds of conversations with Mr. Beast, and Jimmy and Courage, and they're like, This is what you have to do, Tyler. I'm just like, No, I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to freaking play dress-up and do a Fortnite fucking fashion show for views. I'm not.

Even though that video is pretty funny, the one that I just filmed.

Oh, yeah, man. I mean, bro, he's just got it down. I don't know. I love gaming, dude. I love playing the game. I don't like content like that. I don't know, structured content for me has always just felt like, I don't know, planned, fake in a way. Dude, it's a give and take. Because when I plan to do some Among Us streams and that's planned content, it's fun as shit, right? I like the off-the-cusp just game and chitchat. It's just comfortable. It's safe. It's what I've always known. It's what I go back to, it's what I did forever since I've ever started streaming.

Yeah, you're not planning day by how the interaction is going. You're just planning the day to play with your buddies and.

It's fun. Literally, yeah, what's today? I'm going to log on and I'm going to play. That's it. That's my plan, and whatever happens, happens. It was a lot easier during the beginning of Fortnight when everyone was on and we were like, Oh, dude, we can do whatever we want. I already knew I was going to play with everybody. I was going to be lit. But back in the day, it was just like 10 years ago. It was just me logging on, playing MLG, Playlist, and HaleReach, and doing one-to-ones. That's all I knew what was going to happen. And I loved it. I loved it. It was just me, streaming, talking to my viewers. It was always about the viewers.

This is the SK Chai.

Hi, Ninja. I just want to say that I love you and I've been a huge fan of you for years. I am still obsessed with your four-night videos. I love you so much. You're literally like you're so amazing.

From Flowe, what are finances like as a streamer? As in apart from Superchats and perhaps partnerships, what is it like? Also, how do you keep having fun with video games?

What are finances like? Does that mean how do you make money?

Yeah. Apart from the usual, streaming stuff and donations.

I can ask this question a lot. This is usually a question for parents and people that are trying... They're curious about whether or not they want to let their kids do this and if it's a viable way of income. There's so many different ways to make money. Unfortunately, all of it involves having an audience. There's ad revenue when you're playing ads, there's subscriptions where people can subscribe to your stream because they want to support you, and then there's donations. Now, most platforms have an in... What was the word I'm looking for? An on-site way to donate. So it's not PayPal, it's not credit card directly to a PayPal or anything like that. It's literally like - A lot safer. Yeah, it's a lot safer, no chargebacks, so it's very safe. By the way, I 100 % recommend that everyone do this, especially if you're a small streamer. Do not have your PayPal out there, in my opinion. Don't have people donate through Streamlabs and things like that. You can, but again, if you're established, do it because there's text-to-speech and it's funny and shit, it can be great. But if you're a small streamer, a chargeback could literally screw you, especially if someone's donating 50 bucks or 100 bucks and they charge back and then now you're $100 less and you have to pay the chargeback fee.

It's super crazy. So to be safe, you eliminate all those and you just only allow people to donate through the platform, which is great. But then there's sponsorships and there's endorsements and things like that, and those come with networking and going to events like TwitchCon and reaching out. It's just networking at the end of the day. It's a lot of work. It's not easy. It's not for everybody. And again, it just takes a lot of work. If you want to get paid by a company that you like and enjoy, like a gaming company, let's just take Dead by Daylight, for example. It's a very small community. Actually, it's a very big community, a very passionate community. And if you wanted to get paid by them to do a stream or something like that, I would A, start by streaming the game and creating content on YouTube and Twitch and wherever and TikTok. B, follow the developers on Twitter and try to interact with them and then see go to the parties at TwitchCon and go to their events and things like that and show up whenever they're doing live stuff and be like, Yeah, I'm a content creator, blah, blah, blah.

It's just again, it's a lot of work. But unfortunately, like a normal nine to five job, the money doesn't come right away. It comes late later. Great question, though. Floy, thank you for asking, and I hope you have a wonderful day. And there you have it, folks. We've reached the end of another epic AFK with Ninja episode. If you've enjoyed the journey thus far, please consider leaving a rating, review, and hitting that Follow button. We have a ton of incredible guests coming your way, and I want you to be the first to know when a new episode drops. Until next time, catch you soon.

It's AFK with Ninja. Ninja got a show. It's AFK with Ninja, the best podcast in the world. Afk.