Twitch’s Biggest Streamer, Félix “xQc” is Polish, signs with the company’s newest competitor, Kick, a streaming platform that offers better revenue sharing and also appears to be focusing on online gambling. Valued at up to $100 million over two years, the non-exclusive deal is the latest and biggest blow to Twitch as creator dissatisfaction continues to mount.
First reported by The New York TimesThe agreement pays out $35 million per year, with $30 million in additional incentives available if xQc meets certain benchmarks. As Dexerto mention, thatThat would make it the 12th-highest annual payout in all esports, placing xQc just ahead of Kevin Durant.
Kick is a streaming platform startup funded by Online Gambling Company including Easygo Gaming and Stake.com. Following Twitch’s approach In last fall’s gaming promotion, the platform attracted big names like Adin Ross, BruceDropEmOff and Trainwreckstv with its lax rules and 5/95 revenue split for developers. It’s not yet clear if Kick is profitable or how it intends to become so, but it has managed to capitalize on a backlash against Twitch like the Amazon-owned platform has been trying to do monetize more aggressively the people who create content for it.
A”child of twitchRaised in its often toxic chat, xQc started out in the world of League of Legends before continuing over watchbriefly competed in Blizzard’s Overwatch League before finally being released from the Dallas Fuel after a year Series of suspensions for offensive comments. In 2018 he switched to full-time content creation. With that mix of high-quality play, unfiltered remarks, and an endless penchant for controversy, he became Twitch’s most-watched streamer of 2021.
By 2022, leaks revealed that xQc had earned 8 million dollars from subscriptions on the platform. In the same year he lost $1.8 million in a single month through online gambling. While his contract with Kick doesn’t prevent him from streaming on Twitch, the latter has a rule against simulcasting, making it unclear how much time, if any, xQc will devote to the platform that helped him in the first moment to star to make place.
“It’s time”, xQc tweeted on June 16 when his new partnership with Kick was announced. The post included a video promising that its content would remain unchanged on the new platform. Just below that was a retweet shows support for the streamer Nickmercs, who was recently criticized for anti-LGBTQ+ statements.
