Fortnite powers Ninja to become first Twitch streamer with 10m followers

Tyler "Ninja" Blevins has become the first Twitch streamer to reach 10 million followers, a level of fame closely tied to the explosion in popularity of Epic Games' Fortnite.

Blevins made the announcement on his Twitter account, in a tweet that described the milestone as, "seriously ridiculous and the one I am most proud of."

While an impressive achievement in its own right, Blevins has been breaking records on Twitch all year long. In March, a Fortnite stream that featured the rapper Drake drew more than 600,000 concurrent viewers, a record for an individual's Twitch account. Blevins broke that record again one month later, again with a stream of Fortnite.

Indeed, the role that Fortnite has played in Blevins' rapid rise cannot be understated. A pro-am tournament for Epic's game - in which Ninja was just one participant - broke the record for concurrent users on any type of Twitch account in June.

Socialblade, which tracks data of streamers and influencers, puts Ninja's Twitch followers on September 26, 2017 at 555,000. That was the day that Epic added Fortnite's Battle Royale mode, which entirely changed the fortunes of the game, and precipitated an explosion in Blevins' popularity.