Meet the Wigan woman who has become a gaming celebrity and earns £7k-a-month from her bedroom

A woman who was bullied at school for her love of gaming has turned her passion into a full-time job - and now rakes in £7,000 a month from her bedroom.

Natalie Barnes, 20, said she’d previously received a lot of “hate” from other kids but now hopes to move to America to pursue her lucrative career.

She began making money by showing her gameplay on the streaming site Twitch, where punters pay subscriptions to watch their favourite players. And the entrepreneur said she had managed to “grind out” a career by spending more than six hours a night behind her console while juggling school and work.

Natalie is now the most-watched female in Europe on the first-person shooter game Apex Legends and also features among its top-10 players. She’s even deferred a place at law school to continue with her career and hopes to relocate to Austin, Texas, the epicentre of the gaming industry.

She said: “I did get a lot of hate while I was at school, as gaming and social media wasn't as prominent and was seen as more of a male preserve. I would go to school for six-plus hours, coming home and then going to work for four hours and streaming into the late night to grind into making it a career.

“I was exhausted every single day but I tried my best to grind because I knew I wanted to make it. People [now] watch me from all over the world, including America, Australia, Japan and China, and I do all this from the comfort of my bedroom on my PC setup. I've been invited to multiple tournaments and have won $1,000-plus in tournaments and streaming has been my full-time job for a couple of years."

Natalie, from Wigan, said her passion for gaming had begun in the bedroom of her family home, where she had started showcasing her talents. She began with just a handful of viewers but went on to rack up hundreds of subscribers that were willing to splash their cash to watch her incredible abilities.

Natalie also receives extra money through sponsorship deals with corporate clients who want to advertise with her user base. And while she's now become a celebrity within the world of gaming, she still lives with her parents, where she spends nearly all her time streaming her games.

She said: “Since taking it up full-time, I've started to make a name for myself. From starting with an average of five viewers and basically no money, I now peak on viewer counts of 600 concurrent people watching and I'm very well known as a streamer. At events, I'm asked for autographs and pictures and sometimes it doesn't feel real that all this is happening to a young woman from Wigan.”

Natalie met her boyfriend, a US-based professional player who goes under the online name of Gild, but whose real name is Zach Dennis, while visiting tournaments. And after deferring a place to study law at the University of Liverpool, she now hopes to move to Austin, Texas, to pursue a full-time career as a gamer and content creator.

She said: “As much as I love my town, I could go on forever with why I want to venture to the United States – friendships, my relationship, the weather, business opportunities, tournaments, mental health. There is a lot. My parents support me all the way."