Numerous streamers ditched Twitch for YouTube in 2022. But did it pan out?

The exodus of content creators from Twitch to YouTube was steady over the course of 2022. In total, there were five names of note that moved away from Twitch for better deals on YouTube.

But leaving Twitch hasn’t necessarily been the boon for these streamers that they had hoped for. Fuslie, LilyPichu, Myth, Swagg, and Sykkuno were the big names that created well-produced videos to announce their move to YouTube, but out of the group, only one saw a boost in their average viewership after changing platforms, according to Streams Charts.

The FPS gamer from Faze Clan, Swagg, had a 16-percent jump in his average viewers to just more than 10,000 concurrent viewers following his move in early September. All of the others have seen their average viewership decline at least slightly.

Sykkuno, who moved to YouTube in May, has maintained close to the same viewership, having just a 1.5-percent decline in average viewers to 14,836, down from 15,058. Meanwhile, Myth has taken the biggest hit to viewership, going down 72 percent to 978 average viewers from more than 2,000 on Twitch.

It’s worth noting that a large reason why creators move to YouTube from Twitch is for the proverbial “bag.” YouTube has created a reputation for making contracts with creators that allow them the flexibility to make content that doesn’t confine them to streaming. Being the world’s largest video platform after all, YouTube puts creators in a position to create content outside of the normal constraints of a solely livestreaming platform like Twitch.

Ludwig, who made a move to YouTube at the end of 2021, is the prime example of what a creator can do with the freedoms that a YouTube deal can provide. While he hasn’t done quite as much in terms of pumping out livestreaming hours like an xQc or HasanAbi does on Twitch, Ludwig has an increased video output that makes him perhaps more successful than he was on Twitch.

Numbers aren’t necessarily everything, but even looking at the average viewership figures, it’s still too early to say whether the moves to YouTube were a good or bad play for these creators. As was the case with creators like Ludwig, CouRage, Valkyrae, and TimTheTatman, moving to YouTube wasn’t about any immediate bump in live viewership. It was about long-term, overall growth.