Ninja

Background

Richard Tyler Blevins, of Welsh ancestry, was born on June 5, 1991, in the Detroit area, but moved to the Chicago suburbs with his family when he was a baby. He attended Grayslake Central High School and participated in soccer. After graduation, he decided to play video games professionally — participating in tournaments, joining professional organizations, and live-streaming his games.

Blevins began playing “Halo 3” professionally in 2009. He has played for several organizations, including Cloud9, Renegades, Team Liquid, and, most recently, Luminosity Gaming. In August of 2017, he won the P.U.B.G. Gamescom Invitational Squads classification. He also began playing H1Z1, then moved to “PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds.” Blevins began streaming “Fortnite Battle Royale” shortly after the P.U.B.G. Gamescom Invitational, which took place in Germany in November 2017. His Twitch follower count jumped from 500,000 in September 2017 to three million by March 2018. Blevins became the first Twitch streamer to reach three million followers in March 2018. Later that month, while playing Fortnite with Drake, Travis Scott, and JuJu Smith-Schuster, he set the record for the largest concurrent audience on an individual stream outside of tournament events, with 635,000. This stream inspired “Epic Games,” the developers of Fortnite, to host a charitable pro-am event at “E3 2018” In June of that year. Popular streamers paired with celebrities in Fortnite; Blevins paired with electronic musician “Marshmello” and won the event. During his event “Ninja Vegas 2018,” in April 2018, he broke his own viewing record, accumulating an audience of approximately 667,000 live viewers. Blevins partnered with “Red Bull eSports” in June 2018, and on July 21, 2018, he held a special Fortnite event, the “Red Bull Rise Till Dawn,” in Chicago, where players could challenge him. Blevins’ rise in Twitch popularity is thought to be linked to the success of “Fortnite Battle Royale.” In December 2018, Blevins estimated that he had earned close to $10 million in 2018, while “Epic Games” reported that they had earned more than three billion dollars in revenue for the year, primarily from Fortnite. That same month, Blevins became the first P.C. player to reach 5,000 Fortnite wins.

Blevins left Twitch on August 1, 2019, to exclusively stream on Microsoft’s Mixer platform. Blevins announced on September 10, 2020, that he would return to Twitch streaming after his exclusive deal with Mixer expired. He signed an exclusive multi-year contract and began streaming on Twitch the next day.