Twitch has been having a rough time of it lately, angering the content creators it has left with ill thought out rule changes and erratic bannings. To make matters worse, the platform has been slowly losing its biggest stars (with others threatening to leave) to rival streaming platform Kick, which appears to have serious ambitions of dethroning Twitch as the premiere streaming service. It's now made those intentions even clearer by poaching one of Twitch's biggest stars in xQc, with a contract worth up to $100 million.
First revealed by the New York Times, xQc's agent Ryan Morrison has confirmed that the former Twitch star has signed a two-year $70 million non-exclusive contract with Kick, which could rise up to $100 million if the streamer hits certain incentives. The non-exclusive aspect of the deal means that xQc won't be bound to Kick for those two years, and will be allowed to create content fro other platforms such as TikTok, YouTube, and even Twitch.
It's pointed out by the New York Times that this deal is even more lucrative than what some major sports stars are paid, truly driving home Kick's desire to be taken seriously as a streaming service. It definitely has the cash to splash too, as Kick CEO Ed Craven recently stated that he's "prepared to operate at a loss" as he still considers the platform a start-up business.
For Twitch, this will probably start ringing alarm bells, especially after the controversial couple of weeks the platform has had due to its recent attempts to change ad rules for streamers. Many saw the banning of burned in advertisements as the platform's attempt to have sponsors approach the sitre directly rather than its streamers, and the backlash forced Twitch the scrap the change entirely. It might not be happening, but it's still fresh in the minds of disgruntled streamers.
Kick is probably loving the attention on the other hand, and has now firmly established itself as a more generous streaming site, even if its moderation policies are a bit more lax. Controversial figures such as Adin Ross are still allowed to stream on Kick, giving the site a reputation as a place for the more problematic streamers to go once they been banned from Twitch. This deal will go some way to help shake off that reputation, and its clear that Kick isn't going away any time soon, as much as those at Twitch probably want it to.