Facebook Gaming plans to attract former Mixer streamers and others to its own platform

After several high-profile game streamers left Twitch, most found a new home in Microsoft's dedicated platform called Mixer. Notable personalities such a Richard Tyler "Ninja" Blevins, Michael "Shroud" Grzesiek, and Cory "KingGothalion" Michael among others abandoned the Amazon-owned service due to issues with its policies. Last month, the Redmond-based tech company announced that it would close down its outlet given its failure to match that of its rival. Existing members were informed that Facebook Gaming will soon take over and now the latter hopes to attract users.

While there were some former Mixer streamers who successfully transitioned to the social networking group's fold, the rest were more hesitant. As such, Facebook Gaming head Vivek Sharma is aware of the situation and said: "We are taking that approach of introducing ourselves politely, showing up ... and just respectfully delivering results."

Sources note that at more than five billion hours watched for the most recent quarter which ended in June, Twitch remains on top. What follows is Google's YouTube at 1.5 billion hours watched. Coming in at third with 822 million hours watched is Facebook Gaming. The data was pulled from Streamlabs Blog – a Logitech-owned streaming software firm – which aggregates each service's performance.

Businesses who wish to advertise their products or services often rely on the "hours watched" metric to get a grasp of how well their campaign would perform down the line. Before Mixer shut down, it was supposedly at the bottom of the rankings at 106 million hours watched.

"We don't really go and chase after big names because we don't think this is a purely content business," explained Sharma. "If you do think it's a purely content business you end up becoming sorely disappointed, because often the numbers don't come."

Some platforms have reportedly spent a substantial budget to attract new popular talent. With around 2.4 million active users on its social media platform, Facebook Gaming claims a little over 700 million regular views of gaming-related content. This evidently shows that there was little to no growth since November 2019.

Meanwhile, its Facebook Gaming services on mobile seem to be more popular but was rejected by Apple on the App Store for allegedly containing games. As such, it removed the feature, but along with Microsoft it criticised the Cupertino-based tech outfit for its alleged anti-competitive guidelines.