Following a weekend of MIXER Partners reporting sexual assaults and reported seriously racism amongst the hierarchy which even had Phil Spencer himself step in to contact those making the allegations. Suddenly at 19:30PM BST on Monday June 22nd, a Tweet from the official MIXER Twitter released a statement:
The Statement opens with: (Source – MIXER Official Blog)
From the beginning, Mixer has been about creating the most engaging and interactive livestreaming experience. We set out to help streamers build great communities based on deep engagement with their audience. You all have been amazing throughout this journey – the Mixer community has focused on creating welcoming and inclusive communities, and you should be proud of what you have accomplished together.
Ultimately, the success of Partners and streamers on Mixer is dependent on our ability to scale the platform for them as quickly and broadly as possible. It became clear that the time needed to grow our own livestreaming community to scale was out of measure with the vision and experiences that Microsoft and Xbox want to deliver for gamers now, so we’ve decided to close the operations side of Mixer and help the community transition to a new platform. To better serve our community’s needs, we’re teaming up with Facebook to enable the Mixer community to transition to Facebook Gaming. This is a key part of a broader effort that Xbox and Facebook Gaming are embarking on, bringing new experiences and opportunities to the entire world of gaming.
In a nutshell, MIXER’s failure to grow as a streaming platform basically lead to its downfall and in the opening to the statement it is acknowledged that the MIXER experiment for Microsoft and Xbox…failed hugely. As a result, all MIXER Operations will close on July 22nd, exactly 30 days from the statement release day. In a subsequent news article posted on Xbox Wire – the official Xbox News Site, Phil Spencer Head of Xbox himself goes on to hard sell the move to Facebook Gaming :
Beginning today, Facebook Gaming will make it easy for anyone in the Mixer community to join, if they choose to do so. We will work to transition the Mixer community over the next few weeks. Starting on July 22, all Mixer sites and apps will redirect users to Facebook Gaming. For Mixer Partners, streamers, and viewers, we expect you’ll have many questions – you can find more details on how we will support the transition to Facebook Gaming on the Mixer blog here.
Transitioning the Mixer community is a key part of a broader effort that Xbox and Facebook Gaming are embarking on, bringing new experiences and opportunities to Facebook, where every month more than 700 million people play a game, watch a gaming video, or interact in a gaming Group.
MIXER Partners will be granted immediate partnership status with Facebook Gaming starting from now, those who were able to monetise their MIXER channels will be given eligibility to apply to Facebook Gaming’s Level Up monetisation feature. Anyone with outstanding Embers and MIXER Pro subscriptions will have these refunded in the form of an Xbox Gift Card and MIXER Partners will get double payment for all their June earnings.
It should also be noted that despite this deal with Facebook Gaming clearly taking some time to arrange and seal the deal, both MIXER Staff and MIXER Partners were given ZERO warning or notice about this announcement with them finding out just as the public did when the statement was released, raising huge questions not only about the manner in which Microsoft made this decision but the morality of giving all staff/employees and MIXER Partners essentially a 30 days notice that the platform, their jobs and their livelihoods was going to vanish.
Whilst this is all very raw, in fact not even 24hrs have passed at the time of writing this article since the announcement, the reaction has been immediate with MIXER Partners moving to Twitch instead of Facebook Gaming citing the way in which they were pretty much just trashed by Microsoft as a big reason for not continuing a relationship with their new partner Facebook Gaming.
We will continue to update this story as the clock ticks down to July 22nd but many questions have been left unanswered and Microsoft is being accused of throwing away the platform instead of dealing with the accusations of racism and sexual assault and misconduct.
