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14-Year-Old Earned $200,000 Playing Fortnite on YouTube (dailyherald.com)
An anonymous reader quotes the Washington Post:
Griffin Spikoski spends as much as 18 hours a day glued to his computer screen playing the wildly popular, multiplayer video game "Fortnite." His YouTube channel -- where he regularly uploads videos of himself playing the online game -- has nearly 1.2 million subscribers and more than 71 million views; figures that have netted him advertisers, sponsorships and a steady stream of income. Last year, that income totaled nearly $200,000... "It's kind of like my job," Griffin told ABC affiliate WABC-TV, noting he plays about eight hours a day in his Long Island home...
His big break came last year when Spikoski beat a well-known Fortnite player and uploaded a video of the battle to YouTube, quickly resulting in 7.5 million views, according to WABC-TV. It didn't take long, the station reported, for the teenager to make his first $100 from Twitch. Not long after, his father, Chris said, everything changed. "Two months went by and we were like, 'Alright, we're going to need to get an accountant and get a financial adviser,'" he said.
Spikoski's parents told filmmakers that they decided to remove their son from high school as his dedication to gaming deepened... Spikoski's parents said their son had been pushing them to allow him to pursue online schooling. With his success growing, they eventually relented. "It's been his dream to be a gamer, to be in e-sports, just to be in this field since he was a kid," Spikoski said, noting that his son began playing video games at age three. "We don't really see that you need a 9-to-5 job to get by in life and you can actually have fun with a career and enjoy your love and do what you love and make a living out of it," he added.
His big break came last year when Spikoski beat a well-known Fortnite player and uploaded a video of the battle to YouTube, quickly resulting in 7.5 million views, according to WABC-TV. It didn't take long, the station reported, for the teenager to make his first $100 from Twitch. Not long after, his father, Chris said, everything changed. "Two months went by and we were like, 'Alright, we're going to need to get an accountant and get a financial adviser,'" he said.
Spikoski's parents told filmmakers that they decided to remove their son from high school as his dedication to gaming deepened... Spikoski's parents said their son had been pushing them to allow him to pursue online schooling. With his success growing, they eventually relented. "It's been his dream to be a gamer, to be in e-sports, just to be in this field since he was a kid," Spikoski said, noting that his son began playing video games at age three. "We don't really see that you need a 9-to-5 job to get by in life and you can actually have fun with a career and enjoy your love and do what you love and make a living out of it," he added.
That's awesome the kid is making some good money this year.
It sounds like his parents may be foolishly thinking it's going to last forever.
My bachelor's and master's degrees, in a field I really enjoy, will cost me a total of about $19,000 and form the foundation of a very solid income for life. This kid can easily afford to set himself up in a solid career that he'll enjoy. If his parents aren't stupid and think a video game is going to be his permanent job forever.
Hire a financial advisor. Let your kid to what they want. Life teaches you the hard lessons regardless, so regardless of your morals, you're going to learn that most people want friends and partners that are honest. Teach your kid how to use the tools around them to maximize profits right?
--
Freedom is the open window through which pours the sunlight of the human spirit and human dignity. - Herbert Hoover
Yep, being a professional gamer is certainly a dream job. And do you know what else is a dream job? Being a financial advisor to someone with a crapload of money and a 9th grade education (yeah yeah, he's going to continue by taking online courses ..I'm sure that will work well in the priority list along side his 18 hours per day of fortnite)
Does youtube, etc, send you a w2? At what point is this considered a job in which you need to pay payroll tax, etc.
There's no way he's ending up with a million. His financial advisors are going to milk the crap out of that. The kid has a 9th grade education. He's not going to know better. There would be hope that the parents would be able to keep tabs on that, but come on...they're letting him drop out in 9th grade. There no chance anyone in this family is going to be able to protect his interests against the sharks
It's really just a terrible media event. Regardless of how this boy's future pans out, the publicity of all of this encourages more young people to abandon practical study and try to become "professional video gamers" themselves. It's okay to dream, and to have fun gaming. It's bad news to become deluded to the point of discarding your education.
yeah yeah, he's going to continue by taking online courses ..I'm sure that will work well in the priority list along side his 18 hours per day of fortnite
How then would he be any less well off than everyone else that went to college and took a lot of courses that never stuck and they cannot remember, or were essentially trivia related to what they do for a living?
It's not hard to imagine he could take online economics courses and take away the same basic highlights everyone actually remembers from college courses, even while spending 18 hours/day on fort nite. Or probably remembering much more since he has real money to apply lessons to unlike students which work with nothing real...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Well, yeah, while this family should be treating this as the equivalent of winning the lottery, they are instead treating it as sustainable.
Good luck with that. Everyone in this story is fucked and the only one I feel bad for is the kid who does not know better.
As his skill grows??? His reflexes will succumb eventually. There isn't a lot of special skill involved. When he's 24 he will have the skills and the knowledge to press pants in a laundry.
If you have that much money you pay lawyers to handle all the paperwork.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Anywhere a bachelor and masters degree of any value is going to cost way over 200k.
Just because the US education system is broken (specifically the financial side of it), don't assume that's the case elsewhere in the world.
> Yes but how much would that cost now?
US News and World Report does probably the best-known ratings of universities. Here are the ratings for engineering programs at Georgia Tech:
#2 in Aerospace /Aeronautical / Astronautical
#3 in Biomedical
#2 in Chemical
#2 in Civil
#5 in Computer
#4 in Electrical / Electronic / Communications
#4 in Environmental / Environmental Health
For out-of-state students, the tuition for a Georgia Tech master's degree which he can do online (he'd probably like that) is $5,100. Here's the master's in computer science, as one example:
https://www.omscs.gatech.edu/p...
You CAN pay $12 for a cup of coffee, or $1. You can pay $21 for a Sekai-ichi apple, or take your pick of many delicious apples for 25 cents at your nearest grocery store. College is the same - if you totally ignore costs, spend like money is meaningless, you can radically overpay. You can spend $70K on an advanced degree in women's studies or Inuit history. Or you can spend your money like - it's your money. Shop for a good value.
In my case, I (recently) did a bachelor's degree program in which many of the courses were tied to industry certifications. For example, for a networking course the final exam was the Cisco CCNA. Because of that, half way through school I had already achieved multiple respected certifications, which doubled my income even before I finished my degree. I graduated with more money in the bank than I had when I started - the exact opposite of piling up student loan debt.
There are car dealers who will gladly charge you $30K for the same car you can buy elsewhere for $8K. Universities are no different.
> If he can get $500,000 in earnings invested conservatively and not touch it for ten years
After taxes. That's a very big if. He's hot this year. Great. We'll see about next year. Also you need to account for inflation - you need about a million bucks to be financially independent, living comfortably off the earnings. A LOT of people slowly save up a million - it's simple and most anyone in tech can do it, it's not at all easy.
Investing is a VERY good idea. Very, very good. And one of the very best investments you can make is a WISE choice of school, like investing a total of $5,100 to get a master's degree from one of the best engineering schools in the country:
https://slashdot.org/comments....
If you can barely read, you think you're going to be able to do the mountains of paperwork involved in being a major landlord?
That never stopped Donald Trump from being a landlord — or POTUS.
we funnel money from many retards to fewer and fewer other retards for no reason
Rumor has it that PornHub wants to compete with YouTube for non-pornographic videos. Everyone wants YouTube to have competition. The PornHub name might be hard to deal with.
Download all the RRB Answer Key at https://rrbanswerkey.com/
See subject & good for him! He's making lots of money doing something he loves.
Find something you're good at & can make money from while you've got the chance. I wish I'd done something like this instead of making my life revolve around Slashdot.
I wrote a glorified string sorting program & spend my days spamming about it like I'm God's gift to Slashdot. I own my own house but only because my dad gave it to me as a $1 gift. My greatest days were in college playing lacrosse & living the life. Now my life is just empty.
* Give him credit, he loves what he does & is making a great living. Would you say the same about LeBron James going to the NBA after high school? He has more money than you or I ever will.
Your post shows such jealousy. I'm jealous too that he has success while I've wasted my life on being a spammer with a 14k line string sorting program. But I'll admit that's just me regretting all of my failures. I'm usually angry & don't want to admit that, but I took my meds today & have a bit of clarity.
Give the kid a break. Be happy for him. Put aside your jealousy.
APK
P.S.=> Maybe there's hope that it's never too late to turn things around. Perhaps we should stop being jealous and get inspired instead... apk
The PornHub name might be hard to deal with.
I can't imagine many churches would be open streaming their sermons on that domain, for instance... although maybe some enthusiastic pastor would consider it akin to Jesus ministering to the lepers.
#DeleteChrome
what? 8 million? how many kidneys have you got?
At the end, this is no different from the previous "you too can leave school and become a musician, athlete, etc."
How much time is spent by prepubescent gymnasts or tennis players training?
You can barely write a legible post though.
Perhaps, perhaps not. For all we know, his parants expect that the internet famous might last another year or so, and let the kid pull in another 200K. If he's doing online school (read as assisted home school) he won't be that far behind if any and he'll have a nice no strings $400,000 scholarship ready for him.
You sure do not need a 9-to-5 job to be successful. But your body and mind have limits, and when you routinely push past those limits, you do damage. Once you've burned out, you don't recover quickly. So go ahead, eat that seed corn! Just make sure you're not spending much, and set the rest aside, because you'll eventually need it.
Thank you, O Lord, for this porn I am about to receive. Amen.
He sounds like an intelligent, well-behaved and mature 14-year old. He is viewing this professionally and his parents seem to be quite reasonable.
If you have a video game version of Justin Beiber on your hands, you don't just throw it away.
All of us would have loved it to have something like this to happen to us when we were kids.
Success in that field doesn't require superhuman gaming ability. It requires pretty good gaming ability, combined with the career management skills to profit from it. Even if he has to shift eventually to a less twitchy game, he'll still have the contacts and brand recognition to make money off it.
While the future may be different, the current standings are entirely different. Professional sports net players in the order of millions of dollars per year where as professional esports players are making in the tens of thousands (except for the very few exceptional cases). Baseball careers can easily be 20 years. Football is usually in the 5-10 year range. esports players usually last about 2 years, that's it.
It sucks saying this, too, because i'm a huge esports fan. but the money just isn't anywhere near the same caliber yet.
Depends on his parents.
If they're saying, "Ok, $200k means you can have your choice of top gaming peripherals and an extra $20/week pocket money, we'll invest the rest" then he'll be fine.
If they're saying, "Did you want a Ferrari or a Maserati for your 15th birthday?" then yeah, he's fucked.
I am 52, still play video games and have the same super twitch reflexes I had as a kid gamer
I fucking hate you. In my forties I'm down to 'normal teenager' levels of reactions, way slower than I used to be.
I still beat many teens at many games but that's because you need more than raw reactions. Any professional gamer is going to beat me in any game I choose, and that very much wasn't the case when I was 20.
To be fair, existing audience, good gaming skills.. he'll move onto a new game.
Even if he doesn't have career longevity delaying entry to college by 2-3 years isn't going to hurt him long term, especially if he's starting from a wealthier position. He'll be gaining valuable business experience already too, which'll help him in the future.
"Rich Dad" owned multiple companies. Ask the kids what is the purpose of a business. If their answer isn't something like "to provide useful products and services to customers at a profit", they are in trouble.
College is simply overpriced for the value given, *at this time*. This can change. The author of "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" himself graduated from the merchant marines. That is not "uneducated".
227-3517
If he's doing online school (read as assisted home school) he won't be that far behind if any and he'll have a nice no strings $400,000 scholarship ready for him.
On what basis? Doubtful that he'd get a full ride for scholastic achievement, and if he can brag about a $200K income he'll almost certainly fail any means-based test.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
I know people with college degrees who can't function in the real world. And people who left school in the 7th grade who know more about subjects than people who got a degree.
Yes, but we're talking about playing Fortnite instead of staying in school, not a brilliant dropout who didn't need a classroom education.
Anywhere a bachelor and masters degree of any value is going to cost way over 200k.
That's complete nonsense. There are very few places where there is not a decent state-run university that will cost far less than your 200k figure.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
Yeah, but that is just the domain name. If you already have the servers, bandwidth, experience, it's a new domain name and front end interface.
L'Idiot
Duh....this is what happens when I post early in the morning before I'm fully awake.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
You only had one job!
That's not really true. Plenty of people find legit ways to get a masters for free. The Ivys hand those out for free all the time.
Now, if you're telling me marginal students can pay gobs of money to obtain a masters, I'd concur. But if you're saying intelligent qualified students have to pay more than $20k for an education, you might not be playing in the big leagues, education-wise.
As others mentioned, it's possible to have great reflexes even as you age - especially so if you exercise them.
But even with that aside you are utterly ignoring the strategic knowledge that comes from a long time playing a game. You are ignoring the innate understanding of strength and stats of weapons, of tactics for building that are effective (and mandatory) in a high level fort nite battle.
I personally suck at Fortnite but I can see that with a lot of time put into it a person could become amazingly good even without the fastest reflexes... I think that's one of the reasons it's fairly popular, there are a lot of vectors to success.
Bravo I say to the kid who put in the time and in now reaping the rewards. You can go to school any time, but if you find yourself as a master of a hot field then you owe it to yourself to make use of that until you need (or want) to change.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
If only I was a terrible parent, my kids may be rich.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
....but come on...they're letting him drop out in 9th grade. There no chance anyone in this family is going to be able to protect his interests against the sharks
At best, this kid can probably expect to do this for a few years. With the right planning and saving (I know, we're asking a lot out of a 9th grader) he could earn enough money to be very comfortable for the rest of this life. I value an education, but I don't see the problem with giving him this opportunity. He can always go back to school but this income may not be around in two years. Sometimes you've got to "get while the getting is good".
Makes me think back to the JennyCam girl.. What was her run? 3 years or something? But she made a shit-ton of money while she was doing it. I don't know how wisely she invested it, but if she was careful and conservative there will be money, for her, forever..
Valid points, to be sure. But we already have this phenomenon in regards to professional sports.. The odds are what? 10,000-1 that someone will end up being paid to play a professional sport? Some kids try that route, others are more grounded in reality and hit the books..
I gave some surprising news for you. If you're not studying, you still need to eat, have a place to live, etc. So counting the cost of food, housing, etc as the cost of school is ... well that's just stupid.
Just for fun, just because you want to, let's play the stupid game. Let's pretend that the cost of rent, food etc, is the cost of school. You're paying those things today. If you're paying "the cost of school" and not collecting your degree, that would be pretty stupid, wouldn't it?
So as soon as you go down that road you have your choice of two kinds of moronic.
>. Oh, and the online course mean shit.
Personally, I *like* having an annual salary equal to the cost of a 2,000 square foot house. (Meaning I could buy house every year with cash if I didn't have other expenses.) I being able to go to Disneyland and Jamaica with my kid, having a salary that can afford those things. It may not mean anything to you, but I like it.
Given that I was going to get a master's from a top 5 ranked school (top 3 in my field), I didn't have any need for a brand name on my bachelor's. Net cost after tax credit for my bachelor's was $13,500 from WGU. After graduating WGU and before starting my masters my salary was well into six digits. Of course I picked a field that's in demand, not TSTV history.
# Weeks turn into years, how quick they pass...
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Perhaps the problem isn't them.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
One difference: football is football, Rugby is Rugby, hockey is hockey. Sure there's minor rule tweaks but the game from 5 years ago is still largely the same, and they'll probably be much the same 5 years in the future.
New video games are like mushrooms after a rainstorm. How much are those skills & knowledge (and fame, brand, call it what you will) transferable from one to the next hot thing?
Pop music or "reality" TV is probably a closer analogy.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
If this boy is wise, you will use that money to purchase a conservatively sized home with a decent size yard and no homeowners association bindings, and put the rest in a trust will invest that money and use it to pay the yearly taxes. He could exit the economy early, and live most of his life following his passions, only needing to work here and there to cover his expenses,. Allowing him to work or create because he wants to in a field he is passionate about and finds the work rewarding independent of the financial return.
That's $400k before taxes, 4% in NY + 24% Fed if his parents are filing jointly, leaving him ~$288k. Still not a bad start, but if I was his parent, I'd be watching for it to start trailing off, and get him back into school, and I'd be having him tutored while out.
Just another day in Paradise
Yes but how much would that cost now?
About tree fiddy.
Bitter loser. I am 52, still play video games and have the same super twitch reflexes I had as a kid gamer.
I've actually become better in some respects, but that's probably because I no longer have to scrape up quarters and ride my bike to the mall to play video games. I have my own Galaga machine now. What has suffered though is stamina. The aliens just keep attacking and after fending them off for about 15 minutes or so I want a break - just for a minute or two.
But they won't stop! And putting a pause button on an old arcade style quarter game would just be wrong. It's not how they were intended to be played.
And so it goes. For the first 75% of the game or so I'm playing almost perfectly and then I start to lose it. Oh well, it wouldn't be fun if it were easy.
Were we supposed to be talking about Fortnite? I refuse to play it - seems like a bigger waste of time than playing Galaga 38 years after it came out.
Part of it is how much time you devote to the game, whatever your game of choice might be.
Any professional gamer is probably spending at least 5 times as much time playing games as you and that's if you spend a lot of time playing games. If you don't they'll easily spend 10 times as much time.
You'll just have to quit your job and spend 16 hours a day playing whatever it is you want to be good at.
Sure, you can paint it as his innate skill bringing in big bucks, but his skill only got him noticed. From hereon out, it's HIM as a person that's being sold for the entertainment of others. Personalities, performers, athletes-- they are all entertainers feeding the non-stop intrigue of ever more scrutinizing masses.
I hope the parents are putting aside significant portions of this kids' earnings for therapy, remedial education, legal protection, and history erasing so that when this all blows over (and it will... this kind of stuff always does), he'll have a safety net to catch him.
The only issue I see with this is that he'll be fine so long as he can play and Fortnite doesn't go away. Also playing for 18 hours a day isn't healthy. No sane person works that many hours at any job even if you love it because it will most definitely hurt your health in time.