Tyler “Ninja” Blevins has finally lifted the lid on how much he was raking in at the height of his explosive Fortnite fame, and it’s mind-blowing: in just one month, the Twitch superstar banked more than $5m from his creator code alone.
It’s no secret streaming on Twitch is a wealthy pastime for the biggest names on the platform. There’s subscriptions and donos, and if you go big — like Ludwig’s recent viral subathon — you could be looking at $100-200k a month.
Then there’s sponsorships, brand deals, and exclusivity contracts; high-profile creators like Ninja and Shroud attract huge bidding wars.
Streamers have also revealed in the past signing up for advertising streams with studios can pocket them a pretty penny too. Asmongold was offered $300k to play a new title for “a single day,” and insiders told Dexerto that Shroud and Dr Disrespect hauled $1m to play Apex Legends.
All that was dwarfed, however, by Ninja’s earning power at the height of his Fortnite popularity back in 2018, when he was raking in millions a month.
Ninja finally made his Fortnite return this week, breaking a lengthy hiatus that was spurred on by stream snipers and “stupid baby f**king clout-chasing losers.”
During his re-debut, the Twitch star got onto the topic of earnings in Epic’s flagship battle royale title. While everyone knows he was topping the earnings chart in mid-2018 with subs and rafts of donations, he also revealed a “massive” part of his cash came from Fortnite’s popular “Support-a-Creator” code.
“I think the most I ever made in a month off the Fortnite creator code was something like $5 million,” the streamer admitted. “I’m not joking.”
Subscribe to our newsletter for the latest updates on Esports, Gaming and more.
“You know, it’s funny,” he continued soon after, “but I actually talked sh*t to someone the other day who was just roasting my League of Legends game, and I told him that I could buy his family tree.”
- Read More: How does Ninja make money?
Creators only get 5% of every purchase, so the Fortnite skins Ninja sold must have been astronomical; Epic likely netted around $100m just from his sales.
Back in 2019, the former Halo pro suggested he made “close to $10 million” across the entirety of 2018, with 70% of that coming from Twitch and YouTube.
If that’s the case, he may have been lowballing — even if $5M was an anomaly, earning a fifth of that on average would have netted around $14-15 million. Combining these figures, Dexerto tips “the best year of [Ninja’s] life” actually made him closer to a smidge under $25 million in 2018.
It’s truly mouthwatering stuff, and that doesn’t even include his Red Bull deal or the streamer’s monster Mixer signing that was soon to come either.
