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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.
If he can get $500,000 in earnings invested conservatively and not touch it for ten years, he would then have roughly $40,000 per year in income without drawing down.
His parents made the right move, if they don't spend a ton of his income just trying to manage it.
-- botsex is {grep;touch;strip;unzip;head;mount}
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)
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.
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.
He will have to pay quarterly taxes.
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.
People receiving a 1099 (paid as a contractor) are self-employed. They actually pay more payroll tax than employees. When you're an employee, you're actually only paying half of your Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes - your employer pays the other half. When you're self-employed, you pay both halves by yourself. Currently, both halves are 6.2%. So if your company offers to pay you 5% more if you switch from an employee to a contractor, you'd actually be losing money.
The first year you work for yourself, you get a free pass. The IRS lets you pay all your taxes (including payroll taxes) in April. Subsequent years you have to prepay your taxes (income + payroll) in quarterly installments. To avoid any penalties, you can elect to pay the same amount of taxes you paid the previous year (split into 4 payments). Or you can guesstimate your taxes for the current year, and as long as your payments were at least 90% of what you end up owing in April, you won't be penalized. Obviously the former method is the safer way to go; the latter method is typically only used if you expect your income to drop substantially compared to last year.
If you receive a 1099, it's enforced. The company that paid you (Twitch and YouTube in this case) sends the IRS a copy of the 1099 it sends you. So the IRS knows you received the money, and it'll raise all sorts of red flags if you don't include it in your tax returns. Lack of enforcement happens only when the company doesn't give you a 1099 even though they're supposed to (anyone paid $600 or more in a year is supposed to get a 1099).
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.
No he should pay off the mortgage on his parents' house and then whenever they give him a hard time he can go:
Not while you're living under my roof...
That is truly living the 14 yr old dream.
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.
To be fair, his father realising they needed professional help suggests that they're at least trying to assure the money is properly managed and invested.
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 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.
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