Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
Streamers DrLupo, TimTheTatman, and Lirik are some of Twitch’s biggest stars — and they have just officially signed exclusive deals with the platform. Ben “DrLupo” Lupo, Timothy “TimTheTatman” Betar, and Saqib “Lirik” Zahid have a combined 10.36 million followers on Twitch, and each regularly draws thousands of concurrent viewers. They’re also some of the top personalities on Twitch, and drive both conversation and convention across the whole site. The news comes on the heels of a rash of big names leaving Twitch to stream exclusively on sites like Mixer, Microsoft’s streaming service, Facebook Gaming, and YouTube.
Buying their loyalty may have come at a cost:
Loaded, the agency representing nearly all of the top streamers in the world…