Microsoft Report: Morale among Microsoft's Mixer team is at an all-time low

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

Way to go, Ninja

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Today, a report from OnMSFT said that employee morale at Microsoft's livestreaming platform, Mixer, was hitting a significant low. Employees are concerned about the future of the service and there are layoffs taking place there.

 

Check out this fantastic "motivational" speech from Mixer's general manager:

 

[Keyser_Soze]

I was into Mixer for a couple of months but kinda fell off of it.

[TomCat]

i thought ninja was gonna fix this    lol

[Bacon]

I mean, there is no reason for anyone to really go over there. Like, no one is really gonna leave YT for Dailymotion. And like, Twitch has its own culture that you can't steal. 

 

[Brian]

The “stop bitching cause I don’t care” and “be grateful you work for Microsoft” speech won’t win any hearts.

 

[AbsolutSurgen]

That was the worst speech ever. 

[XxEvil AshxX]

I liked Mixer a lot more when it first started and everyone was on an equal footing. Then they started promoting their Mixer Partners and now good luck finding anyone other than who they want you to see.

 

They took a golden opportunity to be the Anti-Twitch but then they fucked up by signing a bunch of high profile streamers.

 

I still use it to stream (i dont know why) but i gave up hope of ever having a viewer long ago. People couldnt find me even if they wanted to, much less stumble across me organically.

 

I basically just use it as a dvr.

[Jwheel86]

I used to watch a lot of Shroud but since moving to Mixer it's not as good. I think its cause he's not chasing anymore, he got in 8 figures and doesn't seem into it. Being set for life in a monster house you built at 23 has to be weird.

[TwinIon]

It's odd to me that MS would spend millions luring a few streamers and then cut the workforce producing the service only months apart. 

 

 

It seems that Shroud's Mixer viewership is only 1/3 of what he got on Twitch, so I can't imagine his presence (and Ninja's) have made many converts in either streamers or viewers.

 

I'm just not convinced that these kinds of platforms don't just naturally gravitate towards monopolies. YouTube has certainly maintained an effective monopoly share despite all the issues with the platform. I'm impressed that Twitch managed to exist at all, and it seems they may have proven that live streaming can be a different enough to keep it distinct. Then again, they haven't really shown they can consistently grow their audience beyond their core gaming audience.

[JPDunks4]

2 hours ago, XxEvil AshxX said:

I liked Mixer a lot more when it first started and everyone was on an equal footing. Then they started promoting their Mixer Partners and now good luck finding anyone other than who they want you to see.

 

They took a golden opportunity to be the Anti-Twitch but then they fucked up by signing a bunch of high profile streamers.

 

I still use it to stream (i dont know why) but i gave up hope of ever having a viewer long ago. People couldnt find me even if they wanted to, much less stumble across me organically.

 

I basically just use it as a dvr.

 

What kind of streaming setup do you have?

 

Have you networked at all to try to get any kind of base viewership from friends?

 

Have you posted here at all with a link?

 

[JPDunks4]

I had spent a lot of time on Mixer, and am friends with a few Partners on the site that have done okay for themselves.

 

I think the move of bringing Ninja on board was a good one.  I dont konw what the cost was though, so hard to totally gauge it, but the amount of free press they got for the move would have cost them who knows how many tens of millions of dollars to generate the same kind of coverage and mind share.  Ninja is a huge brand that transcends gaming at this point to a certain extent, and his following on social media alone is worth a lot if utilized properly.

 

Shroud, on the other hand, is basically just purely a gamer.  He's not interested in doing much of anything but game.  He doesn't seem interested in growing his brand to be anything else.  My guess is Mixer wanted to try to attract an older crowd and thought Shroud might help with that.  

 

The big miss for me, is Mixer seemed to sign these guys with absolutely no real strategy other than, we will sign them and they will stream here now.  Microsoft used Ninja a few times for some PR events at Microsoft stores, and he shoutcasted a Mixer Halo Tourney once.  Shroud has done absolutely nothing other than stream.

 

I really assumed they would have had a comprehensive strategy around using these guys to do special events on Mixer, maybe host special tournaments, whatever, to build more excitement around the site.  They also never ever play or really attempted to mesh in with Mixers own streamers.  I dont really blame them, they have their long time friends they game with that are on Twitch, and continue to play with them, but that doesn't do much to help elevate anyone else on Mixer, or try to build up Mixer in anyway.  But Mixer could have made it part of the deal to have maybe like a, Ninja vs Shroud events where both maybe draft teams and do gaming tourneys vs each other in various games, picking form Mixer Partners.  Something kind of like a Twitch Rivals event which has helped grow Twitch over the years and elevate their Partners.

 

End of the day, Mixers made plenty of mistakes.  I watch less streaming now, and pretty evenly spread my time 50/50 between Twitch and Mixer when I do.  Its hard to see Mixer ever really compete with Twitch, but if they do things right, they can still have a healthy audience for streamers to make a living off of and do their own thing.  Time will tell though.

 

 

[Keyser_Soze]

They need to stream some tournaments other than Smite and Paladins.

[finaljedi]

I did stream some when it was on game bar, when they took it off I figured why bother

[XxEvil AshxX]

8 hours ago, JPDunks4 said:

 

What kind of streaming setup do you have?

 

Have you networked at all to try to get any kind of base viewership from friends?

 

Have you posted here at all with a link?

 

 

Nah. I can't stream for any significant amount of time or consistency so I've never really been too worried about it. I don't have any aspirations of being a streamer. I just do it for fun.

 

That said, i used to get a couple of viewers here and there to chat with but since they changed up their front page i dont even get that.

[DarkStar189]

10 hours ago, JPDunks4 said:

 They also never ever play or really attempted to mesh in with Mixers own streamers.  I dont really blame them, they have their long time friends they game with that are on Twitch, and continue to play with them, but that doesn't do much to help elevate anyone else on Mixer, or try to build up Mixer in anyway.  But Mixer could have made it part of the deal to have maybe like a, Ninja vs Shroud events where both maybe draft teams and do gaming tourneys vs each other in various games, picking form Mixer Partners.  Something kind of like a Twitch Rivals event which has helped grow Twitch over the years and elevate their Partners.

 

 

That would be pretty cool. Did you see this article a few weeks ago on Kotaku?

kotaku.com/top-streamers-are-leaving-twitch-amidst-big-money-and-s-1841338875/amp

About half way through the article it mentions a streamer named Siefe Awade and a streamer named Renee. Both noticed a big change when Ninja was signed on. It's like Mixer got some big names and moved on from the little guys. 

You're idea would have been great starting out.  Bring in the big streamer and giant following, and those followers get exposed to the Mixer crowd.