Top streamers reportedly earning $50,000 per hour

Leading video game streamers are reportedly being offered in excess of $50,000 (£39,400) an hour to promote games for major publishers.

A recent Wall Street Journal report (subscription required) claims top influencers have been paid $50,000 per hour to stream games on Twitch, while other sources suggest the figure could be significantly higher.

Omeed Dariani, CEO of the Online Performers Group, which manages streamers, told Kotaku: “We had one offer from a AAA publisher that was $60K per hour for two hours. The broadcaster declined it—and the publisher came back with a ‘blank check’ offer, which was still declined.”

Battle royale shooter Apex Legends launched with a streamer-led marketing campaign in February. Notably, Reuters claims publisher EA paid Tyler ‘Ninja’ Blevins $1 million to stream the game to over 13 million Twitch followers and tweet about it.

Weekly Apex Legends Twitch viewership hours peaked at 40 million shortly after release – a record high for the streaming platform – and helped the game build a massive, even problematically large player base in a short space of time.

“Your game being top on Twitch is worth a lot now,” Adam Lieb, CEO of marketing firm Gamesight, told Kotaku. Had EA invested the money it spent on Twitch influencers on traditional advertising “on Twitch or IGN… it would not have made as big of an impact”, he suggested.