Tyler 'Ninja' Blevins is one of the most successful gamers in the world. His success playing Fortnite inspired millions of other players to take their game up a notch. He has made some serious waves throughout his gaming career and has been using Twitch to stream his gaming with over 14 million followers with a steady 50,000 viewers every single week.
Blevin has been married since 2017 and has decided based on his marriage to do something quite out there too to other female gamers. He is big into charitable causes and has been a part of a a few large fundraisers. The good and the bad this guy has been known for is nothing compared to the game-shattering move he made recently that will undoubtedly change what he does and what the community will do to follow.
Ninja partnered up with Red Bull and changed the endorsement game for good (pun intended). The limited edition cans were made to sponsor Ninja and feature his face on the cans.
They are now for sale and come in 4, 8 or 12 packs. This kind of collaboration has not been done for a professional gamer before, setting a precedent for others in the future.
Back in March 2018, Ninja did something that no one saw coming - he broke the record for a single individual stream on Twitch while playing Fortnite. He broke this record because he was playing with stars like Travis Scott, Drake, and Juju Smith-Schuster.
The attraction was obvious to other followers of Ninja and the game, but breaking a record was a cherry on top of the cake. However, what he did next was even more surprising.
What can be more impressive than playing with Drake and breaking the streaming record? Breaking his own viewing record!
That is exactly what Ninja did in April 2018 in Vegas when he broke his own numbers with an audience of around 667,000 live viewers at one time. No one has ever had that many viewers on at the same time, not even him!
Back in December 2016, Ninja exposed the address of a donator as a form of payback for having screen name and message that he deemed racist. This act of exposing is called 'doxxing' and is not allowed on the Twitch platform.
The result of this kind of action is suspension, which Ninja got for his actions. Luckily for him, the suspension was only for 48 hours. He tweeted: "I received a 48 hr suspension for releasing the persons address who donated under the racist name. I deserve this and will be back Tuesday.”
Ninja banned female players from playing with him out of respect for his wife. He wanted to make this move so that there could never be a moment where someone creates a rumor that would affect his marriage.
There were many who lashed out at his decision as they said that he is making it harder for them to rise to their own potential. He said he only wants to "control the narrative more, without stupid drama and rumors flooding into our lives.”
Ninja was the first professional e-sports player to be honored with the cover of ESPN Magazine in September 2018.
This breakthrough broke gaming into the mainstream sports arena, changing the ;landscape and helping the gaming industry to be taken more seriously and, in turn, allowing players to make more money.
Despite his massive skills and exposure, Ninja did not qualify for the Fortnite World Cup.
As a response to the public as to why and how this could have happened, Ninja said: "I didn't put the time or effort in." He was more focused on his own operations, which you will not believe the extent of...
Ninja may be a gamer but he has a massive team. By 2018, Ninja had 15 people working for him. Those employed by Ninja include social media managers, personal assistants, and PR managers.
His wife, Jess, is his manager too! Ninja and his wife bought a mansion 6,700 square feet in size in the suburbs of Chicago.
At 28 years old, Ninja is worth $15 million. His earnings are due to his gaming success and subsequent endorsements. Ninja has over 17 million subscribers on YouTube with a subscription model of $5 every month.
That means that Ninja earned between $500,000 and $1 million every month for playing Fortnite. Who else can say that about their monthly income and source?
On the not so good end of the news about Ninja, he was essentially caught using the N-word while rapping along to the song "44 More" by Logic.
The community that was watching, as well as those who found out later were very upset and caused quite a stir. Ninja later issued an apology as he did not mean to hurt anyone but was rather tongue tied while rapping.
Ninja flatly accused another Fortnite player, IcyFive, of stream sniping. Stream sniping is a tactic by some to gain an advantage in gaming by watching a rival players live stream.
When Ninja was eliminated by IcyFive, he reported him for sniping despite the other player saying he was not streaming at the time. When it was proven that IcyFive was right, Ninja had to remove his accusation and apologized.
Back in 2015, Ninja (known as Tyler here) and his family were on the show Family Feud. His family won and receive $20,000 thanks to Tyler answering the head-to-head question correctly.
He and his family divided up the $20,000 between them, which ironically today is far less than he makes on a monthly basis thanks to his gaming career.
Ninja actually has a model for how to become a professional gamer and live streamer. It is the opposite of what you would think he would say.
When asked, he said: “Some people joke about taking a year off to do full-time streaming, quitting jobs or school, and I’m like, ‘No,’ that’s the exact opposite of what you do.” He says to work as usual and use your spare time to stream, with the sacrifice being sleep and quality time with loved one.
Wonder how the Red Bull partnership made so much sense? Well, Ninja plays Fortnite 10 hours a day, every single day.
There are only very rare occasions when he will take off, mostly for gaming events and the like, but 10-hour work days for most of us is a lot so gaming, it seems, is no exception.
Fortnite made him famous, but even Ninja said he owes it all to Halo. He said this of his brother: “I picked it up because I was watching him play all the time, and that was just the game that did it.
It could have been Call of Duty and that would have changed my entire life, but he picked Halo and that was pretty much it. It was better than any other game at the time – it was everything.”
We already said that Ninja plays 10 hours a day every single day. The one time he took off, he was offline for 48 hours and in that time lost 40,000 Twitch followers!
Granted that is nothing compared to his 14 million followers, but that is still quite a number considering the amount of people on the game. This is why he does not take breaks it seems.
The social media statistics on Ninja is quite astounding for a gamer. Ninja has over 13 million followers on Instagram alone.
Additionally, he has over 4 million Twitter followers and 20 million subscribers on YouTube - and growing! His name and likeness are seemingly everywhere, which makes his next move shocking...
In a move the shocked everyone in the gaming industry, Ninja decided to leave Twitch and move to Mixer. He said, “I know this may come as a shock to many of you, but as of today I will be streaming exclusively on Mixer.
I feel like this is a really good chance to get back in touch with my roots and really remember why I fell in love with streaming in the first place.” Ninja said that the decision to move was not about money at all.
The streaming platform that Ninja is moving to was formerly known as Beam.
Now called Mixer, the Microsoft powered platform sets itself apart from other platforms primarily by their unique features designed to allow viewers to interact with streams. Here we see him with none other than Ellen DeGeneres as he teaches her how to play Fortnite.