Twitch star Tyler “Ninja” Blevins provides insight into the backgrounds on Twitch and YouTube. He explains how Epic ensures that creators stay with Fortnite . With 3 special skins, the influencers earned a fortune.
This is how Epic binds Content Creators to Fortnite: Ultimately, it’s about money. What’s interesting is that the money doesn’t come from “direct payments,” such as prize money for tournaments, sponsorships, and advertising contracts.
Epic has found ways to indirectly involve YouTubers and streamers in the success of Fortnite, by ensuring that the “Content Creators” are “paid” by the fans.
Through 3 special skins and special deals, Epic ensured that the largest Content Creators in Fortnite got a huge piece of the pie.
The two skin packs via Twitch made Ninja rich
This was the big hit: The big move by Epic took place back in March and May 2018. Back then, Epic Games partnered with online retailer Amazon and their streaming platform Twitch.
Players who signed up for a Prime subscription via Amazon could give a streamer a subscription and thus provide money on Twitch.
The incredible power of Fortnite to influence players
Ninja says:
“There were two consecutive months when Fortnite had Twitch Prime skins. The power of Fortnite to make people do things for cosmetic items is incredible. I gained 230,000 subscribers in those two months.”
Ninja on Twitch about the Prime skins
How much money does a subscriber bring Ninja? A subscriber is worth at least $4.99 a month. Ninja gets at least half of that, often more – depending on what percentage he negotiated with Twitch.
250,000 subscribers would thus be worth over $500,000 a month. Since the deal lasted for several months, Ninja alone became a millionaire from these Twitch Prime deals.
Ninja pocketed the money because Fortnite players subscribed to receive two skin packs for Fortnite: The 1st and 2nd Fortnite Twitch Prime pack. This skin pack also included a “subscription” on Twitch that players could freely distribute.
This “free” subscription worth $5 was then donated to their favorite Content Creator. Ninja benefited significantly from this:
A Heart Skin makes Creators happy
This was strong last time: Ninja further explains that a recent action by Epic was “golden” for him. Epic had already introduced the “Support a Creator” program back in October.
Players can then name a “Creator” in-game and the Creator receives 5% of the money the player spends in the Fortnite store for V-Bucks. But for a long time, this wasn’t significant; only recently did this program really take off.
Ninja says:
“An incredible thing that Epic Games did for Creators was that the Support-a-Creator code gives players a free skin. I have no idea if Epic will continue to do that. I’m just saying, I am almost at three million. That took off the moment they released a free Support-a-Creator skin.”
Ninja on the Support-a-Creator skin
What kind of skin was that? Epic had promised players a free skin back in February if they supported a Creator. This was evidently another rain of money for Creators like Ninja.
That’s why it’s important: Ninja and many other streamers have had issues with Epic lately since the Season 7 was perceived as weak: Things like the Boombox or the airplane distracted from the actual gameplay and diluted it in the eyes of streamers.
Additionally, a strong new competitor Apex Legends emerged.
But as you can see here, it pays off for streamers and YouTubers to stay with Fortnite because they can monetize the game’s community more effectively through the indirect ways that Epic has cleverly integrated.
However, Apex Legends also knows these tricks. Recently, they offered a Twitch Prime package with a new skin.
