Breaking down Ninja's streaming career so far

Richard Tyler Blevins, famous worldwide as Ninja, is one of the most recognizable gaming personalities online. Starting his professional career in gaming as a Halo 3 player, Blevins gradually became the face of streaming with his Fortnite Battle Royale content.

Dubbed the 'King of Twitch' during his heyday in 2018, he still commands over 18 million followers on the platform despite losing a significant chunk of his viewership when he moved to Mixer after a multimillion-dollar deal. Ninja is now once again in the news for his decision to branch out from the Amazon-owned streaming platform.

In a recent post on Twitter, the Fortnite legend stated that he will be streaming on all major platforms, including YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Twitch, and even Twitter. The blue-haired streamer is taking multi-streaming to a new level.

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Ninja's secret ingredient was consistency

Richard Blevins was born on June 5, 1991, in the Detroit Area. Born to a family of Welsh descent, Blevins was introduced to video games at an early age by his father, who loved playing them. After finishing school, he started his esports career with Halo 3.

Pre-Fortnite

In 2009, he made his entry onto the professional Halo scene. By 2011, he was picked by the top Halo Reach team Final Boss and played at the highest level. He also won the first Halo 4 MLG championship. By this time, he had also started streaming on Twitch.

By 2017, he had officially retired from Halo but had found his style with the new Battle Royale genre evolving on stream. H1Z1 and PUBG gave him a chance to make a name for himself as not only a skilled player but also as a highly entertaining streamer. His highly energetic and emotionally charged streams had started drawing thousands of people.

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Fortnite glory days

However, he blew up when Epic Games released Fortnite Battle Royale in 2017. Fortnite took the streaming space by storm almost as if tailor-made for him, with Ninja being its main benefactor. Five thousand views became ten, ten became 15, and by mid-2020, he averaged between 50-100,000 concurrent viewers on Twitch.

Before long, Ninja made history when he collaborated with Drake, Travis Scott, and JuJu Smith-Schuster in March 2018. The stream broke the internet, setting record-breaking numbers upwards of 650K. The Fortnite streamer became a global sensation and a household name synonymous with gaming.

The following month, the streamer organized the first ever proper Fortnite championship called Ninja Las Vegas, a $50K esports tournament. Epic Games gave the creator his skin in January 2020, permanently including him in a game that has been integral to his success in life.

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Recent years

Despite being a Fornite streamer, he has recently branched out into a few other FPS games, such as Valorant and Apex Legends. He is known for his collaborations with fellow streamers such as Myth and TimTheTatman, who were smaller content creators then, and has helped launch many a career.

A highly contentious point in his career came in August 2019, when Ninja left Twitch for Mixer for $50 million and returned a year after the Microsoft-owned streaming platform closed down. While still pulling in respectable numbers, the streamer never recovered his 50K+ concurrent viewership after 2021.

The recent multi-streaming announcement was a big deal regarding his popularity and viewership. In all accounts, it seems to have worked. He pulled impressive numbers from Twitch, TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram on his debut stream.

According to the clip by SouzyLIVE, at one time, he was pulling in close to 40K views, thrice the number of average viewers for his last month, according to Twitch Tracker.

The streaming community has been looking at the new experiment with much anticipation. As the most-followed Twitch streamer, it is clear that Ninja has no intention of lying low. Only time will tell whether the King of Twitch can rule an Empire of multiple streaming platforms.