Of course, there is no real way of knowing why Ninja’s popularity has declined. It could also be due to everyone constantly commenting on how much he earns and therefore feeling that he doesn’t really need their contributions. Indeed, he does pull in a great deal of additional revenue from tips, cheer bits, event casting payments, sponsorships and tournament winnings. Additionally, it was rumored that he received $1 Million USD from EA Games for streaming Apex Legends at its initial release, which certainly gave it the boost that it needed. This also shows how influential he still is in video gaming, as it has remained within the top ten categories since then. He also generally draws between 30,000 – 160,000+ viewers, despite the decrease in subscribers. Therefore, it could be that his subscriber count decreased largely due to people’s being constantly bombarded with his having made over $500,000 USD in March 2018 from subscribers, and therefore assuming that he generates that much every month and feeling that it would be more worthwhile for them to support smaller streamers. This doesn’t really explain why so many people continue to subscribe to Shroud, Summit1G, TFUE and others who each have over 35,000 subscribers and therefore minimally earn $122,500 USd per month. Although it’s possible that people simply don’t realize how much they do earn.

Furthermore, he still streams several times a week for between 4.5 – 16 hours a session, which indicates that he is certainly still dedicated to his stream and chat and isn’t taking his top-tier position for granted. So, whether he will be able to reestablish himself in the Twitch space to a higher subscriber base or continues to make the majority of his income from sponsorships, tips and casting jobs remains to be seen.

Sources

* https://twitchstats.net/subs/ninja

** https://twitchtracker.com/tfue/subscribers