Mixer

Mixer was a terribly-timed live stream platform owned by Microsoft. It was named due to it being a mixing of every wrong decision in the past decade and it was Microsoft's attempt to dethrone the charnel house streaming service known as Twitch. Unfortunately for Microsoft, they forgot about the 4th Law of Thermodynamics (that being that everything on the internet should only have a singular website/service devoted to it and that everyone will forget the other platforms). Due to this and their own incompetence, Mixer began to fail. This lead to Microsoft trying their probably most idiotic move - bribing certain celebrities (most notably being the very face of Fortnite children, Ninja "My Wife Gave Me an Unwanted Sandwich While I was Gaming" Blevins). This might have worked if most people didn't have a moral compass and if Microsoft didn't completely fuck up the project. Mixer shut down in July 2020 to a deafening cry of "Eh that's sad, anyways...". Everyone bribed got to keep their money.

It is not to be confused with a stand mixer, which had nothing to do with the platform.

History

Mixer launched on January 5, 2016 as Beam. It was named that way after founders Matthew Salsamendi and James Boehm used a dictionary to find a random word for their company. Eventually, both of their fingers pointed to the word "beam", which both of them agreed on to name their company. In May of the same year, it won a conference award. Eventually, it was acquired by Microsoft for an undisclosed amount. They also announced that Beam would be on Windows 10.

In 2017, Microsoft announced that Beam would be renamed to Mixer because they would face lawsuits if Beam was used globally. Additionally, Beam was used by a lot of companies, so that could be considered unoriginal. The rebrand also came in with a lot of features (more on that later). Mixer would receive integration within the Xbox One dashboard, with another tab that shows streams. But who watches them? Most people use Twitch, not Mixer.

Mixer gained a burst of popularity after Ninja would move from Twitch because it prevented him to grow his brand outside of gaming and that Twitch was very toxic. Others like Shroud decided to move to Mixer for the same reasons. While a 188% increase of hours streamed on the service was caused by major streamers, 11.7% of concurrent viewers have fallen. The founders left in 2019, and slowly Mixer started dying.

Features

Mixer used a low-latency protocol called Faster Than Light, which only creates delays of less than a second between the broadcast and viewers, rather than 10-20 seconds. It's a good thing for people with slow Wi-Fi connections, though. It also empathized on interactivity. However, some interactions use a currency called "Sparks". In order to earn them, you have to watch the entire stream. If you leave while the stream is going on, you will not earn the Sparks.

During the rebrand, there was a lot of new features to the site. A larger version of the interactions called "Skills" would be used to trigger special animations and effects in chat. But if you want more fancier Skills you have to use Embers. Embers are paid currency, so it's possible that EA might've suggested this idea to Microsoft. Channels can be rewarded Embers by viewers. Not only that, but they can get payment bonuses. Channel Progression was added in 2019 which is a level system to track users' engagement with a channel overtime. Like channels, they can get benefits as well. Another feature is a moderation bot called "CATbot", which cleaned up unwanted chat content.

Like Twitch, users can purchase subscriptions to Mixer partners. Doing so will grant you exclusive emoticons, and a badge. Originally priced at $6, it was lowered to $5. You should've been better off buying a Twitch or YouTube subscription instead.

Decline

On June 22, 2020, Microsoft announced that Mixer would officially shut down. This was because no one bought the subscriptions or Embers at all. In order to send off this failed service, they decided to collaborate with Facebook of all companies. Any subscriptions and Embers would be converted to Microsoft Store credit, but no one got their money back. Those who worked there would be transferred to another division of Microsoft and they decided to release contracts with streamers. Ninja decided to hold a stream on YouTube before he went back to Twitch, while Shroud just came back to Twitch.

One month later, Mixer officially shut down and now its website redirects to Facebook Gaming. But let's be real, who cares about Facebook Gaming?