Twitch’s exodus of stream talent looks like it will continue, as it was announced today that Tim "TimTheTatman" Betar will follow Benjamin "DrLupo" Lupo in signing an exclusive deal with YouTube to stream on their platform, after the creator posted a cryptic tweet last night, Aug. 31. The move was speculated on for a couple of weeks and has now been confirmed with a video posted to his channel and Twitter.

TimtheTatman signed a multi-year deal with Twitch back in 2019 at the same time as LIRIK and DrLupo, the latter of which was announced by YouTube earlier in the week. With Dr. Disrespect having already moved following his public fallout with Twitch, it now means three of the largest creators on that platform have defected for YouTube.

Streaming on YouTube offers many benefits for talent like Tim, not least the 70/30 revenue split on subs that creators get compared to Twitch’s 50/50 deals, as well as the chance to push content on the largest video platform in the world. With YouTube owned by Google, it also increases visibility for big names beyond the reaches of the site itself, something Twitch cannot currently compete with.

Tim was among the top twenty streamers on Twitch, with 30K active subs at the most recent count, averaging around 50k viewers on most of his streams. He has in excess of six million followers, having joined Twitch back in 2012, and his departure is the biggest loss for Twitch since Shroud and Ninja were lured away by Facebook, only for both to return to Twitch when Facebook pulled the plug on their plans for stream domination.

We spoke to Gareth Harry, who runs Zygo Media, a company that works with Tim and other creators to produce VoD content for YouTube, about the benefits of the move. “The benefits of streaming on YouTube over Twitch are clear, as it allows Tim to keep all of his content, live and VOD on the same platform.” 

“Not only that, but with the revenue share on YouTube being more favorable than Twitch and the vastly superior monetization system for VOD content, there are a lot of reasons we’re seeing big creators move over,” Harry continued. “Then you have the fact the technology is some of the best in the industry, with higher bitrates, better quality streams, and features like live-rewind, as well as YouTube, developing new features at a much faster rate.”