Top gamer Ninja said to have made US$1 million to promote EA's Apex Legends launch

What are a few hours playing video games and a handful of tweets worth? US$1 million if you are Tyler Blevins, known to millions as “Ninja,” the world’s most-followed computer gamer.

Blevins was one of a few select professionals with huge followings pulled in by video game giant Electronic Arts Inc to play and promote its latest title, “Apex Legends,” in the first hours of the launch last month, generating a buzz that notched 10 million sign-ups in the first three days.

The 27-year-old, famous for his hair colour changes – currently a bright, turquoise hue – tweeted about the free-to-play game early on February 5 and streamed the action to his more than 13 million followers on game-streaming site Twitch. For this he was paid around US$1 million, a source told Reuters.

The amount underlines the increasingly cutthroat fight for dominance of the free-to-play battle royale genre that, through Epic Games’ global smash hit “Fortnite”, has pushed major publishers like Electronic Arts to change how they do business.

Representatives for EA and Ninja declined to comment on how much he had been paid, but the amount named by the source is more than twice media reports of Ninja’s monthly earnings from streaming his regular appearances on Fortnite and way above what was speculated on a number of internet discussion boards.

EA also paid popular Polish-Canadian streamer “Shroud,” who has nearly six million Twitch followers, to play Apex Legends but declined to disclose the terms of the deal.