Tyler Blevins, most commonly known as Ninja, is one of Twitch’s biggest video game streamers and earns a reported $500,000 a month through viewer subscriptions, donations, and sponsorships. Due to his popularity, it’s safe to say that if Ninja plays your game, so will plenty of others.
The game that helped propel Ninja to his newfound stardom was Fortnite, developed and published by Epic Games. Due to the popularity of Fortnite, EA had a massive task on their hands to convince players to ditch Fortnite in favour of Apex Legends. One of the best ways to do that though is to get streamers and content creators on-board.
That’s why according to Reuters, EA is alleged to have paid $1 million to Ninja for his support in promoting Apex Legends to his gaming community within the first few hours of the game launching last month. EA also partnered up with several other streamers, including Shroud, but declined to reveal how much he was paid.
Both EA and Ninja have declined to comment regarding how much Ninja and other streamers were paid, but a source told Reuters that it was twice his average monthly earnings, which are reported to be around half a million dollars.
The hype and interest created around Apex Legends saw the game attract 10 million players within three days. That figure rose to 25 million within a week, and earlier this month, more than 50 million players were confirmed to have jumped into Apex Legends.
As a result, EA’s stock price rose 16%, equivalent to $4 billion in monetary terms, within three days of Apex Legends releasing.