Ninja's on the Move - But Where is He Streaming Now?

Instagram | ninja

Richard ‘Ninja’ Blevins is on the move once again, having left his Twitch home base for greener pastures. The place where he started his successful career streaming Fortnite and other games has simply become much too toxic for his sensibilities. In response, he started eyeing other platforms longingly, then finally made the jump.

Although Twitch will always welcome him back with open arms, they likely need to address the toxic chat comments before that happens. For now, Ninja (gamer) will likely stick with his new love, YouTube, where he can at least switch off live chat and comments at his discretion. Reeling from the news yet? Here’s a look at how it all went down.

Ninja hopped on Twitch in 2011, intent on sharing his love for video games. He didn’t gain a huge following until he started playing Fortnite Battle Royale in 2017. When that happened, his following blew up to 14 million, making him the most followed channel on the platform. Over the years, he recorded over 7,500 hours of videos and has an incredible 483,003,307 total views. 

Then Mixer Won Him Over

Twitch remained Ninja’s platform of choice until the 1st of August in 2019. Leading up to the switch, his wife, Jessica Blevins spotted a change in her beloved. She revealed that, “I could tell, as his wife, the last few months on Twitch, he just didn't seem like the Ninja that I knew." And she shared that the toxicity seemed to be sucking the fun out of the whole endeavor.

Even though he was still playing games for a living, Jessica said that Ninja, “didn't seem as enthusiastic, as loud, as hyped-up about wins and motivated to stream. It really seemed like he was kind of losing himself and his love for streaming.” With that, they said goodbye to Twitch and hopped on the all-new and oh-so-promising Mixer train.

Unfortunately, that only lasted a little while before Mixer was bought up by Facebook Gaming. When that happened, Ninja decided he wanted off that wild ride and leapt back to Twitch, for better or for worse. He was so adamant about skipping out on Facebook Gaming that he reportedly turned down a lucrative contract equal double what he was getting paid at Mixer. And with that, he took his 30 million and bounced, but still kept his eyes opened for a better place to stream.

When Ninja tweeted a very cryptic, “One Hour,” one day back in July, 2020, no one knew what to make of it. His followers put up their popcorn memes, begged him to come back, and waited in eager anticipation. Turns out that the tweet was a teaser, meant to get everyone hyped about his impromptu move to YouTube. Right on schedule, he launched his YouTube streaming channel and jumped into playing Fortnight like nothing had happened.

Although his prior streams were cross-posted prior, his first official YouTube stream went up on July 8th, 2020. Since then, he has made himself at home, seemingly for good. But only time will tell how long Ninja remains on this platform, as he’s always looking for a better place to land. For now, with a stunning 24 million subscribers, he’s doing quite well for himself. His most popular videos get nearly ½ million views in a single day, like the one where TimTheTatMan finally gets his big Fall Guys Win.

So, for now, if you want to see Richard doing Ninja stuff and things, then YouTube is the place to tune in. But keep your eye on the newsreel, so you don’t lose track of him when he undoubtedly makes the switch to another platform in the future.

Once loyal to Twitch, Ninja jumped ship, and to keep watching his streams, you have to as well. But where did he go?

Ninja has left Twitch behind once again, heading for much green pastures (he hopes!). Where did he end up? Find out here.

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