It's become a trope to report, with surprise, that people are raking in millions of dollars by streaming themselves play video games live. But there are some, like Tyler Blevins, better known as Ninja, who are in another league. The 28-year-old gets paid, according to CNN, $10 million a year to play Fortnite, stream it and sign endorsements.
The amount may comes as no surprise, but what Ninja has to say about it is interesting. When describing his schedule, he says that he needs to be online, pretty much twelve hours a day, every day and likens it to a café that needs to be open: "they're gonna find another coffee shop if you're not there ... you have to be there all the time." The platform where he is visible for those twelve hours is Twitch and, although he makes a lot of money from it, he still thinks that they could do a better job convincing people to get paid memberships. As it stands, Ninja compares the paid options to the "violin case" of a busker.
Ninja's success has directly paralleled that of Fortnite, which became more than just a big video game when Ninja invited Drake to join his stream and play a couple matches. Since then, the game's popularity has skyrocketed and now has 200 million users, which is 60% more than in the month of June.
