Facebook Gaming replacing Microsoft’s Mixer streaming platform

Microsoft’s Mixer streaming platform is shutting down next month, absorbing existing services into the Facebook Gaming platform. In a surprising move for much of the Mixer community, Head of Xbox Phil Spencer announced the decision to discontinue the service in a blog post on Monday.

Spencer writes “…the success of Partners and streamers on Mixer is dependent on our ability to scale the service 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 we want to deliver to gamers now.” A lack of users and redundancy with future xCloud streaming integration has also likely led to Mixer’s retirement.

Spencer goes on to explain that from July 22nd all Mixer Partners will become Facebook Gaming Partners, with a month’s grace period to ease the transition. Top streamers who had existing exclusivity deals with Mixer, such as Ninja and Shroud, have reportedly had their contracts paid out and can now consider using other streaming platforms in addition to Facebook Gaming. Spencer celebrates the successes of the Mixer service, lauding its features as crucial to other Microsoft projects such as Teams video-streaming.

This news comes as Facebook adds The Order: 1886 developers Ready at Dawn to its list of recently acquired studios. Operating as Oculus Studios, Facebook’s VR development team has been slowly growing, enlisting Beat Saber developers Beat Games in November 2019.

From humble FarmVille beginnings to hosting gaming services that allegedly attract more than 700 million users a month, Facebook is proving to be a consistent mainstay in the gaming community. Will you be switching over to Facebook Gaming for your streaming purposes? Or are you heartbroken to see the end of Mixer? Let us know all of your feelings via Checkpoint Gaming on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.