Shroud’s comeback stream shows the power of Twitch’s biggest names - The Verge

Michael “Shroud” Grzesiek’s first stream back on Twitch after his departure for Mixer was, by any measure, a massive success.

It’s a win for Twitch, which signed Grzesiek to an exclusive deal after his Mixer contract was up when that site went dark for good.

Since he left Mixer, Blevins has streamed on both YouTube and Twitch to massive numbers both times — it’s clear he’s testing the waters and figuring out where he’ll stream next.

On his stream, Grzesiek said he’d taken 45 days off, while Blevins popped up on YouTube a couple weeks after Mixer shut down in June.

For Grzesiek and Blevins, returning to streaming meant seeing a large part of their communities again; when both of them signed to Mixer, they lost significant chunks of their audiences, which is to say the people who wouldn’t follow them to a whole new website.