Featured Streamer Benjamin 'DrLupo' Moves To YouTube, Twitch Tries To Be Patient!

DrLupo, get a deal that keeps him "safe" for life. (photo: instagram @drlupo)

JAKARTA - Twitch recently lost one of its most popular stars Benjamin “DrLupo”. Lupo announced that he had signed a deal to stream exclusively on YouTube Gaming.

The deal comes nearly two years after Lupo signed an exclusive agreement with Amazon-owned Twitch, which was reportedly worth millions of dollars a year at the time.

"We don't expect anything but the best in everything that's to come," Twitch said after Lupo left the platform.

PR agency, Loaded on Lupo's behalf, declined to share details of its deal with YouTube. But the streamer told The Washington Post that Lupo is now "safe for life."

He also plans to create more non-streaming video content. “Obviously, I will still be playing video games on YouTube. But we have the opportunity now to do some new things," said Lupo.

The 34-year-old Lupo is known for playing the games Fortnite, Destiny, Escape from Tarkov and Among Us. Lupo's first YouTube Gaming stream will take place on August 31.

Lupo already has considerable prestige on YouTube, with over 1.7 million subscribers. However, his followers on Twitch are much larger than on the Google-owned platform. He has 4.5 million followers on Twitch, and was named the 26th most followed person.

Compiled from BBC International, changing platforms or even games, can usually result in the loss of a large following. Take streamer Tyler "Ninja" Blevins, for example, who signed a multimillion-dollar exclusive deal with streaming service Microsoft Mixer in 2019. Less than a year later, Microsoft announced Mixer was shutting down and encouraging partners to move to Facebook Gaming.

Like YouTube Gaming, Facebook Gaming is relatively small in the live streaming space compared to Amazon's Twitch, which dominates. Ninja chose to return to Twitch, along with Shroud, another top streamer with a deal with Microsoft.

In April, Streamlabs and Stream Hatchet estimated that of the total hours watched in the first quarter of 2021, Twitch had 72 percent, YouTube Gaming more than 15 percent and Facebook 12 percent. However, the figure that YouTube has achieved is that during the pandemic, it is likely that if the pandemic is over, its game streaming service will drop by as much as 4 percent.