Revealed: Mouthwatering millions Ninja made at height of Fortnite fame

Isaac McIntyre
Ninja plays Fortnite on-stage at World Cup.

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 streaming
Ninja may well be Twitch’s biggest ever earner, raking in millions a year since 2018.

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.”

“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.”

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.

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About The Author

Isaac was formerly the Australian Managing Editor at Dexerto. Isaac began his writing career as a sports journalist at Fairfax Media, before falling in love with all things esports and gaming. Since then he's covered Oceanic and global League of Legends for Upcomer, Hotspawn, and Snowball Esports.