Mixer – From the beginning, Mixer has been about creating the most engaging and interactive livestreaming experience. We set out to help streamers build great communities based on deep engagement with their audience. You all have been amazing throughout this journey – the Mixer community has focused on creating welcoming and inclusive communities, and you should be proud of what you have accomplished together.
Ultimately, the success of Partners and streamers on Mixer is dependent on our ability to scale the platform for them as quickly and broadly as possible. It became clear that the time needed to grow our own livestreaming community to scale was out of measure with the vision and experiences that Microsoft and Xbox want to deliver for gamers now, so we’ve decided to close the operations side of Mixer and help the community transition to a new platform. To better serve our community’s needs, we’re teaming up with Facebook to enable the Mixer community to transition to Facebook Gaming. This is a key part of a broader effort that Xbox and Facebook Gaming are embarking on, bringing new experiences and opportunities to the entire world of gaming.
I’m sitting at my desk at work on a Monday and I am just shocked, man.
When I first started PartyChat, I never planned on streaming but some of my friends encouraged me to try it out. Mixer is the platform I chose since it was easy to stream from my Xbox. I made a lot of friends during that time, had an awesome supportive community, and even though I moved to Twitch earlier this year, I still appreciated the community at Mixer for being a positive and encouraging place to grow.
Obviously, like many of you I’m sure, I’ve been outraged at the accusations that have been directed at Mixer from one of their former employees. I haven’t spoken on it because I was waiting for Mixer’s response to cover the full story, but that analogy, that perspective towards partners? It’s fucking disgusting. To think that the people that are literally building your platform, working day and night to try and build their own brands and make the Mixer brand legitimate are your “slaves”? And when one of the only black employees states he is offended by that analogy, your response is “you need to have thicker skin”? That pissed me off.
I already saw a lot of my friends that earned partnership share what their response was going to be, but I never in a million years expected for THIS to be Mixer’s response. There’s no way this just happened over the weekend; this had to have been in the works for a while now and just got fast-tracked due to the outrage. But make no mistake: this is strategically being done to change the conversation. No one involved in that incident is going to get punished now. There will be no actual justice. Just memes about how Twitch is king, and talk about where Ninja and Shroud will be going next.
And let’s talk about those jokes for just a second. Listen, I’m not gonna lie to you and say that I’m not laughing at some of the memes and jokes being thrown around right now about Mixer, Twitch, Ninja, etc. I am. Believe me, I love to laugh at them. But for all of those “crowning” Twitch for being the superior platform and bragging about it, I hope you’re also paying attention to the current allegations surrounding your own platform. Like how the CEO chuckled at a sexual harassment question at a meeting or how a former VP shared that someone who had previously had their VIP access at an event revoked due to sexual harassment allegations was given entry again the following year for political reasons.
And lastly, I can’t help but feel miserable for all the abandoned Mixer partners who not only now have to start all over from square one, but weren’t even give the fucking decency of a heads-up. They all found out just like the rest of us: from a fucking tweet. It just goes to show again how much Microsoft and Mixer execs really didn’t give a fuck about their platform or their community.
It’s all just a ploy to shift the conversation. And surprise, surprise: it worked. Look at your Twitter timeline. You no longer see all the talk about how we need to improve as a gaming community to support women and people of color. It’s all just news, jokes, and memes…
At the end of the day, the people that made it big on Mixer will be fine on whatever platform they move to, but the partners that worked for years to carve out a nice little piece for themselves just got royally fucked with absolutely no warning. All that work, all those long days and nights spent building a community just disregarded and thrown to the dust. Will their communities stay loyal and move with them? Some will I’m sure but regardless you’re starting from square one all over again unless you move to Facebook Gaming. Is that the right move? I have no idea.
But it sucks. It absolutely sucks. I hate seeing all the stories of the disgusting things that guys do to women in the gaming community and the ignorant racist bullshit that people with power continue to allow and ignore for the growth of their brands, but I also read all of those thinking that maybe this time with so many people speaking up there will be an actual change on these platforms.
But nope. We’re all just back on our bullshit again.
Goddamnit.
