Ninja
YouTubeThe hunt for Dr Disrespect has gone cold, with no updates of note since he posted a music video (of course) implying that his Twitch ban situation was “out of his hands,” along with a series of weirdly PR-washed interviews to major outlets implying he would return to streaming in some form soon, though that hasn’t happened yet.
But while Doc has been the most mysterious missing streamer, he isn’t the only one. And it’s starting to feel a little bit weird that after the collapse of Mixer, the two highest profile streamers Microsoft signed have not returned to streaming in almost any capacity.
I’m talking of course about Ninja and Shroud, which Microsoft lured to Mixer for millions, or tens of millions, depending on which inside sources you believe. And the situation is so odd that even Ninja’s wife has commented on it in recent days:
It has been 32 days since Doctor Disrespect last streamed on Twitch.
It has been 38 days since Shroud last streamed on Mixer.
It has been 20 days since Ninja last streamed on YouTube (all via Detective Disrespect).
Ninja’s stream was the most interesting one because it was hyped up like an official announcement, and yet it turned out that no deal was in place and Ninja simply went back to streaming with his old buds, Lupo, Tim and Courage in a special event. At the time, I wondered why Ninja was back to streaming when there was no deal in place, as why would say, YouTube pay him to stream in an exclusive contract when he was going to just do it anyway?
But Ninja is smarter than me, and I can see what he was doing now. The stream was only a one time thing, and I believe he did it to show both Twitch and YouTube just how much of a draw he still is with big viewership numbers, flexing that yes, he should still be offered a high dollar contract. And yet three weeks later, we’ve still heard nothing from him about where he’ll be streaming. He’s posting on social media with regularity, his YouTube channel is putting up “throwback” videos every day that are still getting 400,000 to a million views despite being mostly old content, and he appears to be getting very into Valorant recently, but nope, no more streaming.
Shroud is even more of a black box. Shroud has not posted on Twitter (to his 1.6 million followers) since the Mixer shutdown was announced, nor has he uploaded anything to his YouTube (for his 6.3 million subscribers) over the same time. And I don’t believe he’s done any “trial” streams either.
While Dr Disrespect’s disappearance and silence likely have to do with legal issues, either contract disputes or something more serious, that isn’t the case with Shroud or Ninja. Rather, those two are in an interesting position. They rejected offers from Facebook Gaming, while other big streamers like Gothalion signed on to FB on day one and have been streaming there ever since, more or less. So presumably Shroud and Ninja are holding out for YouTube or Twitch to make them a big offer, and yet the problem with the Mixer situation is that it likely decreased their “value” and showed that signing big names is not exactly an enormous benefit for a streaming site. It feels like at this point, the companies have more bargaining power, as the longer Shroud and Ninja disappear, the more their fans might simply move on to new streamers. And for sites as huge as Twitch or YouTube, it is honestly not that big of a deal if a streamer, even one getting 80,000-100,000 views a stream, doesn’t return or goes elsewhere when there are millions upon millions of stream views across all their creators every day. In short, I think the collapse of Mixer kind of burst the bubble on the “streamer signing” gold rush. Not to say that those deals still won’t happen, but the fall of Mixer kind of lowered their worth, at least for the moment.
I am sure that Shroud and Ninja just want to get back to streaming again, but it’s also understandable they have to wait until they can find a solid contract that they deem valuable enough to sign. Again, if Ninja just shows up and starts streaming on YouTube daily to get back to work, there’s zero reason for them to offer him a contract. It’s a weird, complicated situation.
I would expect some news about these two in the coming weeks. Dr Disrespect on the other hand? Who knows. Could be total silence for six months or we could see him live on CNN tomorrow announcing his own streaming site at this rate.
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The Link LonkJuly 29, 2020 at 07:19PM
https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2020/07/29/forget-dr-disrespect-where-are-ninja-and-shroud/
Forget Dr Disrespect, Where Are Ninja And Shroud? - Forbes
https://news.google.com/search?q=forget&hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en
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