No. The people making money are content creators. They are churning out multiple videos a week or streaming for hours and hours, gathering thousands of followers/views and sponsorships on top of the YouTube/twitch ad streams.

You don’t make any serious money from a casual hobby. These people treat it as a job, because it is one.

I think the only game where you can make IRL money is Eve Online.

Hmm, no, but you could get really really good at trucking or farming sim or bus sim and apply those skills to real life. That is something people have actually done.

I assume you’re young?

Big streamers can make okay money, but to be honest it’s not really something to aspire to generally speaking. It’s not nearly as glamorous as it sounds. When you spend all of your time doing something that’s supposed to be relaxing/fun as a job and you can’t even necessarily do what you want anyway, it’s not really fun anymore. And beyond that, only a very small portion of people that attempt it actually make money from it and it’s much more about how you can manipulate social media platforms than it is anything about gaming.

If you look at most popular streamers today you will notice that they have years of doing it, and the reason is that it’s difficult to gain followers, and even if you to viral for some random reason it’s difficult to maintain the followers engaged. And without followers ads or sponsors are not going to give you too much money, and trying to charge your followers is more likely to lose you followers than earn you money.

In short, take a “normal” job that’s okay with you doing that as a side gig, and with time you might earn enough on your streaming that you might be able to quit your job. Good luck, it’s a hard market to get into.

Read this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supply_and_demand

Don’t ruin a hobby with money. You will lose all enjoyment of it. Something changes when you get paid for it.

They’re not gamers, they’re entertainers playing video games. Gamers who earn money are really pros, in which case they’re comparable to athletes.

Essentially, no.

Basically every job in gaming is going to be a shit job. Because everyone likes gaming, so there is a massive applicant pool, so companies can pay you terribly and treat you terribly. There are a tiny, tuny handful of actually good jobs in gaming - top level streamer, game storyboarding, pro gamer - that actually pay at least somewhat decently and have their enjoyable moments. But to get these jobs, you’ll truly need to be the best of the best. You cannot be “casual” - you must be beyond excellent, and charismatic, and lucky. And then you will always be stressed that someone will dethrone you as top dog.

The best way to turn a gaming hobby into a job is to start modding games. This itself wont really make you money either, but it is a good way to learn software. Then you can get a software job.

Im a casual gamer

No. You have to be dedicated to this and push for years to maybe, just maybe make actual money. Not only do you have to be a gamer, but you also have to have a personality people like.

If you want peace of mind find a job that you toletate well. You don’t need to love it. You’ll develop a deeper interest for whatever it is as time goes on. The important thing is that it’s something you don’t find completely overwhelming. The other important thing is that you can leave it at the door when you go home. Every hour of your free time you spend thinking about work is an hour of unpaid overtime.

Just try different things until something sticks and don’t forget that you can still fine-tune your career or do something else entirely if you wake up one day and realize that’s what you want.

The reality is that they don’t. Only a small percentage of them gain a big enough following that they can get by with streaming payouts, donations, and sponsorships.

There’s so many people to watch and hardly anything unique about them to make them stand out.

You should prepare yourself to get a real job.

You can game on the side. You can even try to build up a following and turn that into something that replaces your job. But you probably won’t get that off the ground before needing a real job.

For the most part they work normal-ass jobs like everyone else.

My sister streams MMOs and JRPGs as a hobby. She has a very modest following and doesn’t do much to promote herself. She gets a check of $100-$300 every few months. I think it’s a pretty good deal for the effort involved. I tried it for a bit but found out quickly I have nothing meaningful (and barely anything meaningless) to say.