Well the saga of “what’s Ninja going to do next?” has taken another turn, unexpected if you haven’t been paying attention, but somewhat more so if you have been.

Late last night Ninja announced that he’d be playing with his old pal Dr Lupo in the morning. What he did not say that he would be returning to Twitch to do so, and he’s live there as we speak.

After the shutdown of Mixer, Ninja turned down a transition offer to go to Facebook Gaming, having his (reportedly eight figure) Mixer contract paid out, but keeping his options open. But the problem is that in this negotiations period he…hasn’t really been able to stream.

A few weeks ago, he randomly showed up with a YouTube stream that drew huge numbers as he played with his old Fortnite crew. Today, he’s back on Twitch in a similar way for the first time since he left for Mixer, not as a partner or as someone who has signed a contract, but this appears to be another “testing the waters” moment, and giving himself some bargaining power as he shows that he can still attract X amount of viewers on Y or Z platform. As of right now, he’s just under 100,000 views on Twitch at the very beginning of his stream, showing that yes, there is still plenty of interest for him on the platform.

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Again, like the YouTube experiment, I would expect this Twitch stream to be a short-lived thing, not a regular occurrence as he continues to figure out his next contract. No one’s gonna pay him if he’ll stream somewhere regularly for free. Twitch makes sense for him because that’s where he built his original audience and it would likely be easier to attract and retain huge numbers back there. With that said, he did not leave Twitch on the best of terms for Mixer, and YouTube is also a potentially good fit as he has 24 million subscribers there on his channel, which is its own kind of built-in audience for streams. Ultimately, through the numbers both of these streams are putting up, it seems like he would find success on either platform, and would not suffer the kind of massive viewer loss that discouraged him on Mixer.

For now, Fortnite players are getting a dose of nostalgia watching Ninja stream with Lupo on Twitch. Fortnite just had a big update today for season 3 here with cars, so expect a lot of antics. I hope Ninja can figure out what he’s doing soon so he can get back to streaming regularly, as seeing him on these streams, you can really tell its all he wants to do, no matter how many millions he’s already banked.

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