Emulating the announcement of Ninja, Shroud celebrated the move with a short sketch. In it, he says he’s “making moves”, before a dramatic sequence that displays the Mixer platform on his dual monitors. Shortly after the announcement, the streamer hit 78,000 viewers on his “new home” playing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. Assumedly, Grzesiek penned a similar deal with Microsoft as Belvins, who may have been paid millions.
— Michael Grzesiek (@shroud) October 24, 2019 With this tactic, Microsoft is essentially looking to buy viewers. By getting big streamers to agree to exclusivity deals, it hopes their fanbase, as well as other streamers, will follow. After some shaky months and staff layoffs, the service now appears to be all-in in its battle for the streaming market. Microsoft has already sunk a lot of money into Mixer, which it acquired under the name Beam in 2016. Building off its low-latency technology, it has added new monetization streams, and PC/Xbox integrations. It’s no coincidence that Mixer has been buying up FPS streamers specifically. Shroud’s switch comes with the release of Modern Warfare, and you can bet that both will be playing Microsoft’s own Halo 6 on launch. By putting modern-day celebrities in front of its titles, the platform can act as a secondary, controlled marketing tool. As with Blevins, Mixer users can subscribe to Shroud’s channel for free for a limited period. You can find him here.
