Twitch’s greatest streamer, Félix “xQc” Lengyel, is signing with the corporate’s latest rival, Kick, a streaming platform that gives higher income splits and in addition seems to be centered round on-line playing. The non-exclusive deal is valued at as much as $100 million over two years, and is the most recent and largest blow to Twitch as creator discontent continues to mount.
As first reported by The New York Occasions, the settlement pays out $35 million per yr, with $30 million in extra incentives obtainable if xQc hits sure benchmarks. As Dexerto points out, this might make it the twelfth greatest annual payout in all of sports activities, placing xQc proper forward of Kevin Durant.
Kick is a streaming platform startup funded by on-line playing firms together with Easygo Gaming and Stake.com. Following Twitch’s crackdown on playing promotion final fall, the platform attracted large names like Adin Ross, BruceDropEmOff, and Trainwreckstv with its lax guidelines and 5/95 income cut up for creators. It’s not but clear if Kick is worthwhile or the way it plans to turn into so, nevertheless it has managed to profit from a backlash in opposition to Twitch because the Amazon-owned platform has sought to extra aggressively monetize the individuals making content material for it.
A “youngster of Twitch” raised in its often-toxic chat, xQc began on this planet of League of Legends earlier than shifting on to Overwatch, briefly competing in Blizzard’s Overwatch League earlier than ultimately being launched from the Dallas Gasoline after a collection of suspensions for offensive feedback. He pivoted to being a full-time content material creator in 2018, with this mixture of high-level play, unfiltered remarks, and an infinite penchant for controversy turning him into Twitch’s most-watched streamer by 2021.
By 2022, leaks revealed that xQc had earned $8 million from subscriptions on the platform. That very same yr, he misplaced $1.8 million in a single month from on-line playing. Whereas his contract with Kick doesn’t preclude him from streaming on Twitch, the latter has a rule in opposition to simulcasting, making it unclear how a lot time, if any, xQc will nonetheless dedicate to the platform that helped flip him right into a star within the first place.
“It’s time,” xQc tweeted on June 16, when his new partnership with Kick was introduced. The publish included a video promising his content material would stay unchanged on the brand new platform. Immediately beneath that was a retweet displaying assist for streamer Nickmercs, who’d lately come below fireplace for making anti-LGBTQ+ remarks.
