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Richard Tyler Blevins (born June 5, 1991), more commonly known by his online alias Ninja or Ninjashyper, is an American Twitch streamer and Internet personality. As of August 14, 2018, he is the most watched streamer on Twitch with over ten million followers and an average of over 50,000 viewers per stream.

Career
Blevins was born Richard Tyler Blevins to American parents of Welsh descent. Tyler Blevins' youth in the Chicago suburbs included video-games and sports. He attended Grayslake Central High School, where he played soccer, and he was also an avid video-game player. When he graduated, he decided to play video games professionally, entering tournaments, joining professional organizations, and started live streaming his games.

As "Ninja", Blevins began playing Halo 3 professionally in 2009. He played for various teams including Cloud9, Renegades, Team Liquid, and is currently with Luminosity Gaming. Ninja became a streamer in 2011 first with Justin.tv, then moved to Twitch.tv. He began playing H1Z1 at the start of its early access program with Steam, then moved to PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds when it also entered Steam's early access program. He joined Luminosity Gaming in 2017 first as a Halo player, then to H1Z1, later moving to PUBG, where he won the PUBG Gamescom Invitational in the 3rd Person Squads classification. He began streaming Fortnite regularly and his viewership began to grow, which coincided with the game's growth in popularity. In September 2017, he had 500,000 followers; in six months, that number grew by 250 percent. In March 2018, Ninja set the Twitch.tv record for a single individual stream while playing Fortnite after he hosted a game with Drake, Travis Scott, and Juju Smith-Schuster. In April 2018, he broke his own viewing record during his event Ninja Vegas 2018 where he accumulated an audience of 667,000 live viewers.

Ninja has over 16 million subscribers on YouTube as of August 2018. He earns over $500,000 per month from streaming Fortnite, and credits the game's free-to-play business model as a growth factor.

On June 17, 2018 Tyler had announced that he had partnered with Red Bull Esports. He also mentioned in the announcement that fans can challenge him at a special Fortnite event called the "Red Bull Rise Till Dawn" in Chicago, Illinois on July 21, 2018.

Death
In July 2018, Ninja went offline on social media, as well as Twitch, which caused his fans to become worried about his whereabouts. An Instagram user began to spread a rumor that Ninja had died from a disease called ligma. According to Polygon, "Ligma is a dangerous disease that takes the lives of Fortnite streamers" The disease was fatal, and Ninja was on his death bed, many of his fans originally believed that he was actually dead.

Charitable work
In a fundraising charity stream held in February 2018, Ninja raised over $110,000 to be donated to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. During the first Fortnite Battle Royale Esports event in April 2018, Ninja gave away nearly $50,000 in prize money, with $2,500 of that going to the Alzheimer's Association. Later in April, he participated in the #Clips4Kids event with other fellow streamers Dr.Lupo and Timthetatman, and in total, he helped raise over $340,000. At E3 2018, Ninja and Marshmello won the Fortnite Pro-Am event and donated $1 million to a charity of their choice.

Personal life
His family was featured in several episodes of the television game show Family Feud in 2015.

In August 2017, Tyler married Twitch streamer Jessica "JGhosty" Goch.

Controversy
Ninja announced in an interview with Polygon that he does not stream with female gamers out of respect for his marriage and to avoid the rumors that the streaming could create. He received mixed reactions; some said that he should set the example and not make it more difficult for female streamers to rise to prominence, while others supported his cause, claiming that he should be allowed to do what he wants to protect his marriage. Ninja issued a response to the critics, reaffirming his support for gender equality and restating his commitment to his marriage, this time mentioning some prominent female streamers by name.