[German]A surprising announcement for me: Microsoft will close its mixer streaming service as of July 22, 2020, and will pass on existing partners and streamers to Facebook Gaming.
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What is Mixer?
Mixer is a live streaming platform from Microsoft, which started on January 5, 2016 under the name Beam as a service (after it has been aquired), but was renamed Mixer in May 2017. Microsoft was in competition with Twitch, YouTube and even Facebook Gaming, but has probably lost the battle. Mixer recently had a market share of 3.2%.
End for Mixer on 22 July 2020
In this blog post, Microsoft has now announced in rather flowery words that they will discontinue Mixer as a service in a month. The Verge here quotes Phil Spencer, Microsoft's head of gaming, from a conducted interview:
We started pretty far behind, in terms of where Mixer's monthly active viewers were compared to some of the big players out there. I think the Mixer community is really going to benefit from the broad audience that Facebook has through their properties, and the abilities to reach gamers in a very seamless way through the social platform Facebook has.
Microsoft has partnered with Facebook to move existing mixer viewers and streamers (who were lured to mixers) to Facebook Gaming in the coming weeks. On 22 July 2020, all mixer sites and apps will be automatically redirected to Facebook Gaming. Existing mixer partners will be granted partner status on Facebook Gaming, and all streamers using the mixer monetization program will be eligible for Facebook's level upgrade program.
Mixer viewers with outstanding ember credits, channel subscriptions or Mixer Pro subscriptions will receive Xbox gift card credit. Microsoft wants to save the mixer technology into the Microsoft Teams project. Yet another project that has been ruined by Microsoft – or a project never been put on the road to success. Now it will be exciting to see what streamers, lured by Twitch to mixer, are doing now. At least they are free to return to Twitch. But it will not be a pleasure – subscribers are always lost.
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