After more than a decade livestreaming exclusively on Twitch, Nick “Nickmercs” Kolcheff is the latest gaming mega-talent to be lured to upstart competitor Kick by an outsized payday. He will stream primarily, though non-exclusively, on the upstart platform beginning in late October, thanks to a one-year contract worth an estimated $10 million, according to a source familiar with the deal. Kick did not respond to a request for comment.

Since its founding last December, Kick has made a lot of noise in the industry with astronomical, talent-friendly contracts. In June, Kick signed longtime Twitch stars Felix “xQc” Lengyel and Kaitlyn “Amouranth” Siragusa with annual deals worth an estimated $35 million and $7 million, respectively. Kick allows its content creators to retain 95% of subscription revenues on their channels, and currently does not run ads during the streams. As of October, Kick says it has 20 million registered users, but its 140,000 average viewers still pales in comparison to Twitch’s 2.4 million viewer average.

The combination of outrageous, non-exclusive contracts and a considerably smaller audience have led many to question Kick’s economic viability, but Kick founders Ed Craven and Bijan Tehrani are sitting on a massive cryptocurrency war chest from their other venture, Stake, a crypto-backed offshore casino that generated $2.6 billion in revenue in 2022. Certain creators have been offered cryptocurrency as a portion of their total competition.

“The public companies we compete against are disadvantaged in that they are beholden to shareholders whose primary focus is short term profitability,” Tehrani told Forbes in July.

Nickmercs began streaming on Twitch predecessor Justin.tv in 2010, and built a rapid fanbase around his bombastic personality and aggressive gaming style on titles like Fortnite and Call of Duty: Warzone. In 2019, he joined FaZe Clan as a co-owner, though his shares have lost nearly all of their value with the publicly traded company now trading around 20 cents.

The 28-year-old became one of the faces of Twitch during a pandemic-era gaming boom that eventually landed him an eight-figure platform exclusivity contract with the Amazon-backed live streaming giant in 2020. Today, Nickmercs has almost seven million followers on the platform, and at his peak, he had more than 80,000 monthly subscribers.

But last September, Twitch announced it was lowering the amount of subscription revenue share kept by top creators from 70% down to 50% starting in June 2023, signaling a strategy shift away from big payouts for its biggest stars.

Over the trailing twelve months, Nickmercs has earned an estimated $11.5 million from his content and sponsorships with Under Armour, UFC and Beats by Dre. It places him among the highest-paid gamers in the world, and last month he was named to Forbes’ annual list of the internet’s Top Creators.

But he describes his ambition as insatiable. “The goalpost always moves,” Nickmercs told Forbes in January. “I always want more."

In addition to his monthly payouts, Kick has agreed to help fund live events hosted and produced by Nickmercs, as well as the prize pools for digital gaming tournaments broadcast on Kick. It’s part of his larger strategy to establish a strong community that will mobilize around his entrepreneurial efforts. “I cannot wait to start streaming on Kick,” he says. “They’re looking for me and the community we've built to help define gaming on the platform and I’m excited to make an immediate impact. Kick stepped up for the MFAM [Mercs family] and we're ready to step up for them."