Michael “Shroud” Grzesiek, one of the most popular live streamers in the world, returned to Twitch on Wednesday after Microsoft’s decision to shut down the competing Mixer platform, drawing nearly 500,000 active viewers into its comeback stream before it even officially started. Many of those viewers appeared only to find a “starting soon” message before Shroud entered his camera at about 2:50 PM ET. Twitch users kept throwing in, and Shroud surpassed just a few minutes past the hour half a million active viewers.
Shroud says his lateness was due to technical difficulties, a common culprit he cites when he shows up too late to plunder streams that have become a bit of an inner joke among his legion of fans. But he said the end result of apparent bitrate and audio issues was that his stream might stay at 720p. Despite the early issues, a new goateed Shroud unleashed Riot’s new tactical shooter Valorant, where he began to hold between about 400,000 and 475,000 active viewers. Shroud is currently responsible for more than 80 percent of the viewership of Valorant, which now sits at the top of the most viewed Twitch charts.
Shrink, next to his Fortnite-playing current Tyler “Ninja” Blevins, signed a deal with Mixer before Microsoft paid him and other streamers to terminate their exclusive contracts as part of the shutdown terms. He then spent more than a month away streaming, deciding which platform he might return to, before announcing yesterday that he would return to the Amazon-owned product, where he originally started streaming.
Although Microsoft partnered with Facebook to move its existing user base to the social networking Facebook Gaming platform, popular streamers such as Ninja and Shroud were free to negotiate new deals, and Shroud grabbed Twitch. It is unclear how much money the platform will pay to secure it, but Microsoft is expected to pay it in the $ 10 million ballpark for its short time on Mixer.
