Ninja Played Fortnite on YouTube, and the Gaming World Lost Its Mind - The New York Times

The buzz that Tyler Blevins, also known as Ninja, generated by streaming on a new platform showed the power famous content creators have in the video game industry.

When Tyler Blevins, who is better known in the video gaming world as Ninja, posted a cryptic tweet on Wednesday that seemed to hint at some sort of announcement, his ardent fans thought he might reveal the kind of big-dollar contract one would expect from baseball or basketball stars.

Blevins, who was left without an online home when the streaming platform Mixer announced in June that it would shut down, played video games live on YouTube and promised fans that more streams were coming “sooner rather than later.”.

Blevins has said in interviews he would like to be as well known as the basketball star LeBron James.

Blevins, who has said he makes more than $500,000 a month from streaming, has more than 14 million followers on Twitch — the most on the platform — despite not being active there since he left for Mixer last summer, reportedly making $20 million to $30 million in the process.

He has nearly 24 million YouTube subscribers, though he said on his stream that he had never gone live on YouTube before Wednesday.

The platform recently signed the contentious star Felix Kjellberg, better known as PewDiePie, to an exclusive contract, but trails Twitch over all in the fight to dominate the live gaming industry.

Blevins had struck a deal with YouTube, which is owned by Google.