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July 18, 2022According to TheWashingtonPost:
Where once the departure of Twitch stars for YouTube Gaming elicited shock and awe, announcements now come in at a regular clip, like falling dominoes. Last week, Twitch mainstay Lily “LilyPichu” Ki dropped a video saying that she’d be making YouTube her exclusive home. Mere days later, fellow live-streaming household name Ali “Myth” Kabbani told viewers he’d be doing the same.
In their respective first streams on YouTube, Ki and Kabbani explained why they decided to leave behind the platform that in many ways made them. (Twitch is owned by Amazon, whose founder, Jeff Bezos, owns The Washington Post.)
Unsurprisingly, money played a big role.
“I felt like I wasn’t really going anywhere on Twitch,” said Ki. “Financial stability, change of space — if I’m going to fall off, I might as well fall off on YouTube, where I get paid.”
Kabbani similarly said YouTube offered “an amount that would have been stupid of me to turn down.” But he also joined in a refrain that’s become common among streamers who’ve made the jump: YouTube, unlike Twitch, seemed authentically interested in him as a creator.
“In general, I just felt like they were a team that was genuinely invested in who I am and what I could bring to the table in terms of content creation and personality,” Kabbani said.
The battle between Twitch and YouTube has only just begun
This continues a strategy of signing Twitch streamers that YouTube began in 2019 by striking an exclusive deal with 100 Thieves co-owner Jack “CouRage” Dunlop, but which really kicked into high gear last year. When YouTube’s global head of gaming Ryan Wyatt left the company at the beginning of 2022, questions circulated about whether that strategy would continue. The answer appears to be a resounding yes.
Ki and Kabbani join an increasingly deep bench of ex-Twitch talent that includes Rachell “Valkyrae” Hofstetter, Ludwig Ahgren, Ben “DrLupo” Lupo, Tim “TimTheTatman” Betar and Sykkuno — the latter of whom made the move to YouTube just a couple of months ago (and who has kept his real name private). In response, Twitch has hyped its high-profile re-signings like Nick “Nickmercs” Kolcheff and Imane “Pokimane” Anys.
Nonetheless, streamers and pundits have deemed these increasingly frequent moves “the Twitch exodus.”
