Top streamer Ninja reportedly paid $1 million by EA for promoting Apex Legends

[midian182]

In brief: It’s no wonder that many kids today have aspirations of becoming a top streamer. A new report claims that industry leader Tyler Blevins, better known as Ninja, was paid $1 million by EA to play and promote Apex Legends the day after its launch.

Reuters reports that Ninja earned that massive sum for just a few hours of livestreaming the battle royale game and tweeting about it to his followers on February 5. An EA spokesperson told Kotaku that all gameplay streamed by content creators after “midday” on this date was “completely organic,” as in, they were playing out of choice from that point.

Ninja, who appeared on the cover of ESPN magazine last September, made nearly $10 million last year, and told CNN he makes over $500,000 on a “good month.” But $1 million for a single promotion is spectacular even by his standards.

“We really wanted to create a day where you couldn’t escape Apex if you cared about games and we wanted it to feel like an event was happening everywhere around the globe on that day,” said Apex Legends lead producer Drew McCoy.

There have long been questions over this sort of sponsored content, particularly when it comes to influencers not disclosing payments, but EA said it has a policy in place to address this. “EA requires full disclosure and transparency with every Game Changer, content activation, or paid sponsorship that we are involved with,” it reads.

EA also paid other streamers, including Shroud (Michael Grzesiek) and Myth (Ali Kabbani), to promote the game. It’s unknown how much they were given, but the amounts are unlikely to be close to Ninja’s pay.

The $1 million figure illustrate how live streaming has become an important part of high-profile games’ marketing campaigns. With Apex Legends surpassing 50 million players in its first month, this looks like money well spent.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/79186-top-streamer-ninja-reportedly-paid-1-million-ea.html

 

[Misagt]

Businesses will always be looking for the best way to market their products. Considering that Ninja has millions of people watching his stream. I'm guessing 90+ percent play Battleroyal games. They probably got 500k to try the game. Then add in those people telling their friends. It adds up to millions in a week. So yeah I think they were smart about it.

 

[texasrattler]

This why some people hate streamers. I don't mind or care he made money, good for him. But the product was broke, same as with Pubg and some other game that got streamers to hype up the game. The only reason Respawn got away with it, is because it's free. But when you start paying for a game like their Apex packs or coins, then it's different and the game should be working. Don't forget they didn't release the game as a beta.
This is something that I feel will start getting addressed. Games being hyped up by streamers but are not even finished, in some cases barely even polished. It's no different than the old bait and switch. You tell me and show me a product, even a free one but it's something else when I get it.

This why you should NOT follow streamers advice, they are just paid employees trying to sell you crap. Im not saying the games aren't good but expect issues from the beginning or simply might be better off waiting awhile.

I loved Pubg but it became a utter mess. It's crap compared to what it could have been.
Apex Legends is very good but has had several issues that should have been tested properly before ever being released. There's thousands that cant play due to crashing. Some are nvidia and AMD driver related, others are game related.