Ninja, Pokimane Scaling Back Twitch Streams

Two of Twitch’s most popular streamers, Ninja and Pokimane, are scaling back their presence on the streaming platform.

Ninja, whose real name is Tyler Blevins, announced on Twitter that he is taking a break from Twitch. His return to Twitch is uncertain. “I just need a break… I don’t know when I will be back, or where.” He did not offer any further details surrounding the nature of his departure.

As for Pokimane, whose real name is Imane Anys, she in a video on YouTube that she plans to spend less time streaming on Twitch and will instead focus on publishing non-gaming content for different platforms.

“I hope it doesn’t sound big-headed of me to say, but nowadays when I see things on Twitch, it kinda feels like, ‘been there, done that,'” she said, as reported by PCGamer.

Pokimane went on to say streaming is a “hyper-competitive industry” and that she is feeling burnt out. “Ultimately, the reason I say this is because I’m just at a point in my life that it doesn’t feel creatively fulfilling to feed into that anymore,” she said.

Ninja and Pokimane are two of the biggest Twitch streamers in the world, but how this affects Twitch’s bottom line remains to be seen. A number of popular streamers have dumped Twitch completely in recent times, shifting to other platforms. Ninja, for example, was reportedly paid $20 million-$30 million to leave Twitch for Microsoft’s Mixer. But he returned to Twitch after Mixer folded.

Twitch, which is owned by Amazon, recently started allowing partnered streamers to release videos on YouTube and Facebook. It also recently came to light that only 0.015% of Twitch streamers earn a livable wage on the platform.