Noted YouTube creator CaptainSparklez buys a luxury mansion on the Sunset Strip, bankrolled by the enormous success of his many popular Minecraft videos.
How much money did you make the last time you sat down to play Minecraft? One popular streamer has earned enough from his time with the game that he just signed the deed to a $4.5 million mansion situated on the desirable Sunset Strip in Los Angeles.
The streamer, known to his 8 million YouTube subscribers as CaptainSparklez, publishes content to the service on a daily basis — and his videos consistently garner hundreds of thousands of views. His output largely centres around Minecraft, although other Let’s Play series and vlogs are relatively common also.
It’s no secret at this point that Minecraft is a major money spinner. When creator Notch sold rights to the game to Microsoft last year for $2.5 billion, he earned more than enough to purchase a multi-million dollar mansion of his own, reportedly a property that Jay-Z and Beyonce were also in the running for.
However, it’s one thing for the creator of a hugely popular video game to be financially rewarded for his work. On the other hand, a video game streamer being able to afford a mansion in Los Angeles based on his output is far more unusual — although not completely unheard of.
Swedish YouTube phenom PewDiePie remains the most successful gaming personality on the service. A report circulating earlier this year suggested that the 25-year-old’s production companypulled in a whopping $7.45 million in 2014 alone, a decent paycheck by most measures.
It’s safe to say that the relationship between YouTube and video games is changing certain industry practices. Whileopportunities to promote a game on television might seem like the best course of action, the most popular YouTube users have the ways and means to target a very specific audience.
That being said, there’s a dark side to the popularity of YouTube as a means of advertising video games. Just last month, it emerged that Machinima had been paid to promote the Xbox One in videos released in the run-up to the release of the console, a move that many have criticized as being underhand and misleading.
For now, noted YouTubers like CaptainSparklez seem set to continue to reap the benefits of the service’s enormous reach. All that remains to be seen is whether the site can continue its dominance in online video, or whether a competitor will manage to snatch its crown.
[“Source- gamerant”]
