Who are those millionaires?

People who donate thousands of dollars to streamers.

Everybody at least once has thought about making good money and becoming famous by just doing what they love. For most of those whose hobby is playing video games, it is the dream of becoming a renowned content creator (CC) or a streamer.

Contrary to the opinion of a lot of people, being a streamer is an arduous task. The vast majority of live broadcasters don’t get much money (if they actually get any money) not to mention the popularity. But even in this over-competitive environment, there are some lucky ones, who receive gut-wrenching amounts of money in just a couple of minutes.

All of us have heard stories like someone donated ten or even more thousand dollars to a streamer at once. And when hearing such stories, we always think about how lucky is that streamer. But if we go further and think: “Who is that mysterious donator?”, we won’t avoid the question “Why he just did that?”

The question about who are those top donators is shrouded in mysteries and rumors. We all remember how a person whose nickname was Motar2k gradually donated more than $50000 to a professional CS:GO player PashaBiceps. Who is Motar2k? Most people think he is an oil tycoon from one of the Middle Eastern countries. But this is just a rumor. Nobody knows the real personality of this generous eSports fan.

Motar2k, Amhai, Matavor — these and many other people are known for their huge donations, but all information about them is merely based on assumptions. The more interesting question is WHY they donate?

We at DeStream have tried to reveal the psychology behind these phenomena and identified a number of reasons why people donate such big amounts of money to streamers.

Here are 5 main reasons:

• lifestyle culture;
• self-affirmation;
• a desire to support your beloved content creator;
• a love to compete;
• fake donations;

Lifestyle culture:

Oil tycoons from the East are among the wealthiest people in the world.

Let’s imagine that the rumors are true and some donators are real oil tycoons. If we talk about personalities like Matavor, Amhai, etc., we can assume that all these significant donations are related to their pastime culture. Everything, which is related to their hobbies and rest, is made bright, expensive, and chic. To approve it, you can just remember tons of videos about sheiks’ pastime. As an example, let us show you comment on Quorra written by a person who has worked in the services sector:

“the strip club I worked at a couple years back had this Saudi prince come in once every couple months and this dude would just BLOW money. He was dropping 100s on everything. Held the door open for him? 100. Brought him a drink? 100. iirc he dropped over 10 grand in the VIP one night on 2 girls which I’m sure they were very thankful for”

So, the first reason for such significant donations is the lifestyle of sheiks. They just can’t do something in smaller scales.

Self-affirmation:

For lots of people the problem of self-affirmation causes much more problems than they can imagine.

A need for self-affirmation has turned into a big problem nowadays. Work-home-sleep-repeat — this is the slogan of the 21st-century person. This course can lead to mental isolation and cause great discomfort. Even though many are satisfied with such a stable course of life, some are discontented with this alignment.

Displeased people, somehow, try to draw their lives. One of the ways to do it is to donate a significant sum of money to a streamer and get all his/her and chat’s attention for a couple of minutes. If donating periodically, they become the streamer’s beloved subscriber, and the chat always salutes when they write something.

It’s an excellent way to get rid of the lack of attention, but don’t go too far with this. Let’s not forget the story about Chinese donator Ni:

Ni was a Chinese medical Institution accountant in Suzhou, and much loved watching streams. Her love was so big that she periodically was falsifying documents and stealing money from her workplace for donations. Total she donated 1.64 million yuan (≈$230000) to random streamers. Now she faces 5-year imprisonment and a $49000 penalty.

In conclusion, let me remind you that pleasure from being the top donator can lead to severe addiction. There is nothing terrible in donating streamers, but discretion is essential even in this kind of pastime.

A desire to support your beloved content creator:

Some streamers have managed to become their audience’s idols.

Mostly it is not needed to be a professional eSportsman to become a streamer. You can play terribly, lose every time or even not to play games at all. The most needed thing on Twitch is the charisma. If a streamer is able to deploy a joyful atmosphere to viewers, it will grant him/her a success. Funny jokes, witty comments, attractive personality — all these features work better and are more important than playing skill.

Thanks to these qualities, many successful streamers are becoming the idols of their viewers. And it will be a pleasure for a fan to help his/her favorite to be wealthier and more famous. People who donate lots of money to streamers, can chat with them in private, play online games in the same team and even go to different places together.

So, the real fan dream to hang out with your idol is our next reason to donate thousands of dollars to streamers.

A love to compete:

Competition is not only a way to become better, but also to have fun, especially if you are rich.

Most streamers have a list of top donors on their screen visible while streaming. The list shows the people who made most significant donations for a certain period.

It is definitely very nice to be on this list so everybody can see your nickname, but it is much better to be in the first place. There were a lot of stories when top donators were starting to compete with each other. During this competition, they could raise their bets to enormous values.

For example, in 2017 a Russian World of Tanks streamer with nickname AkTep received a total of more than $10000 in donations in just 20 minutes. The reason has become a “battle” between his top donators whose nicknames were HOUSE_87, 5L4Y, ZooMZaZooM, and Eugeniu.

Here is what AkTep said after that broadcast:

“These three (House_87, 5L4Y, and Eugeniu) were playing an elevator game. I think they got bored and started to knock down each other’s top donations. In a certain moment, I’ve understood that these people can’t be stopped. After that “Zoom” (ZooMZaZooM) has burst into my stream with words “Hey, I thought I am your top donator!”, and started throwing off 100k (in rubles) donations. I would have a heart attack if they continued this concert for a bit longer.”

As we can see, the competition is possible in any sphere, and donations on Twitch are not an exception. This was 4th, and one of the most profitable for streamers reason people donate thousands of dollars during broadcasts.

Fake Donations:

Sometimes the sum of money can be too large, and streamers can’t hold their emotions.

Almost every platform that gives an ability to make donations has a function of a test-donation. It is made for streamers can check out if everything works clear. Doing test-donation streamer can choose any amount of money to throw off. You can donate yourself an imaginary $100000 at any moment. Many streamers do such donations time after time and pretend to react vigorously to entertain their public and inspire other viewers to make more donations.

This is not the most honest ploy in relation to viewers, but it is much worse when viewers themselves make fake donations. It works as follows:

Viewer donates a certain sum (a big sum as usual) of money to the streamer; the streamer reacts, often does some tasks given by the donator or even cries. Then the malicious donator uses a chargeback option of the payment service to take the money back.

These are very rude shenanigans that can not only heart the streamers’ feelings but also cause big financial problems for them. Yet often such dirty deeds get punished very harshly.

The most famous punishment story happened with an Australian 18-year old boy. His name was Anthony Archer. Under the “iNexus_Ninja” nickname he donated nearly $50000 to random streamers from his parents’ credit card. He planned to wait for a month, so the streamers could spend some of the cash, and then cancel the transactions through PayPal. Fortunately, Paypal refused to give the money back.

So what conclusion can be drawn from this story? Cheap actions like what Anthony did not only entail great harm to your karma but indeed are very dangerous for your wallet.

As we can see, there can be many reasons for a person to donate $10000 to a streamer at once merely. This might be based on the ever-changing and various characteristics of people. But just like everywhere, here are some general patterns, which we have already delivered to you. Also, let me remind that we are DeStream — an emotional donation platform focused on providing new experiences and aimed to determinate borders between viewers and content creators. If you’re a streamer or wish to become a streamer, we have great tools to ease your job and help you become unique and attractive. For more detailed information visit our website: www.destream.net