Tyler 'Ninja' Blevins cuts a much happier picture since his shock move from streaming juggernaut Twitch, to Microsoft's rival Mixer platform. That's according to his wife and manager Jessica, anyway. When he announced he would be swapping allegiances back in August of this year, there was a lot of speculation as to exactly why.
In a wide-ranging interview with Business Times, Jessica Blevins has spoken at length about how Twitch made negotiating a new contract that allowed for licensing deals and growing Ninja's brand away from the platform nigh on impossible.
"With the wording of how that contract was going, he wouldn't have been able to grow his brand much outside of gaming... There were already conflicts with his current sponsors and resigning with that platform. And we were like, 'Straight up, guys, we've worked so, so hard to grow the Ninja brand to license things and get his name out there. We can't go backwards with it.' So that's where that deal just really started not making sense."
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Another major reason for the switch was that his chatroom on Twitch had become "pretty toxic" with Tyler becoming more and more disinterested in streaming.
"I could tell, as his wife, the last few months on Twitch, he just didn't seem like the Ninja that I knew... He 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."
At the time, it was speculated that the move was facilitated in part by a big money payout to Ninja, with a figure of around $6 million being banded around. While this has never been confirmed, Jessica was keen to play down rumours, and say that money was nothing to do with the decision.
"Money was the last thing on our mind... It's like, they don't even know what went on behind the scenes and how hard we tried to make that deal work - and then how amazing Microsoft was for us."
Ninja racked up the subscribers, hitting over 1 million mere days after the move to Mixer was announced, and now has over 2.3 million dedicated followers. This, coupled with over 21.6 million views at time of writing and a host of branding deals in the pipelines, shows that the popular streamer is far from done in the world of gaming.
If you've any interest in Ninja and want to know what's going on in his world, the Business Insider interview gives a good glimpse into his life via wife and manager Jessica, so it's well worth checking out.