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Fortnite megastar Ninja reveals how much money he made from people watching his Twitch stream in 2018

The popular gamer spent 4,000 hours live streaming himself playing Fortnite last year

Anthony Cuthbertson
Wednesday 02 January 2019 15:27 GMT
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Fortnite megastar Ninja reveals he may be first '$10-million-a-year' gamer

The world's most popular online streamer made close to $10 million (£7.9m) from playing video games in 2018.

Tyler Blevins, known by his online persona Ninja, revealed that 70 per cent of this income came from people viewing his Twitch or YouTube channel, with the rest coming from sponsors.

The 27-year-old has a combined following of more than 32 million accounts across both platforms, whose views give him a cut of ad sales on his channels.

Mr Blevins played roughly 4,000 hours of the hugely popular battle royale game Fortnite over the last 12 months, he told CNN, the equivalent of around 166 straight days.

This helped him rank as the most popular streamer on Twitch, with people watching more than 225 million hours of his streams.

The second-placed channel racked up a comparatively meagre 99 million hours of views.

2018 also marked the year that he and other streamers began to be noticed beyond gaming circles, thanks to several high profile collaborations with other celebrities.

In March, Mr Blevins teamed up with rapper Drake to play Fortnite, with over 600,000 people tuning in to watch the pair play.

The gamer was even invited to take part in New Year's Eve celebrations in New York's Times Square, although his attempts to make the crowd join him in a floss dance were met with bewilderment.

His popularity has grown in tandem with that of Fortnite, with the game itself earning its developers Epic Games a reported $3 billion in 2018.

More than 200 million people have now played Fortnite, helping Epic Games reach a valuation of over $15 billion, according to Bloomberg.

Since its release in 2017, the game has been rolled out on every major gaming platform, including Android and iOS, meaning players can download it on nearly any device.

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