‘ChocoTaco’ explains his decision to become a full-time PUBG streamer

Popular PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds streamer Jake ‘ChocoTaco’ Throop has announced that he has quit his job to become a full-time streamer of Bluehole’s game.

Throop, who is 29, told Kotaku that he had been working as an area manager for a company that teaches engineering to kids using LEGO. Just a few months back he was streaming for as few as five viewers, but as his skill rating grew (he previously had the highest kill rating on the North American servers) so did his audience. He currently has over 15k followers on Twitch, and just under 800 subscribers.

“The company I work at is just a bunch of nerds. Everyone was so supportive,” he said of handing in his notice. “My parents are excited about it. They watch me. My mom loves it. She can see me every day. My dad’s been in chat.

“I was nervous, honestly, though. Maybe not nervous, but worried about telling my parents I was gonna quit my job to stream video games. I don’t want them to worry about me. But I waited to tell them until I was making more money streaming than I was at my regular job. That helped. They were just really supportive.

“My thought process is, ‘Why the hell would you not do this?’ At the end of the year—January, 2018—I’m gonna be playing video games for a living. Like, I feel like that’s every little kids’ dream. When I was a kid and beat games on the Sega Genesis or N64, they’d tell you the game testers at the end credits. I wanted to be that guy, although I’m sure those guys didn’t get paid much.”

Throop also explained how for the last few months he’s been working an eight-hour job, coming home to eat and then streaming for six or seven hours. He also had to find time for video editing work.

“I always thought that gaming as a career would be the dream,” he added. “I haven’t really tried being a pro gamer or anything like that, but I’ve always played the games I play at a high level—Counter-Strike 1.6, Source, and once DOTA 2 came out, I played a lot of DOTA. I have 7,000 hours of DOTA played. I was ranked in the top 50 in the Americas at one point.”

I'm super excited to announce that I will be transitioning to full-time streaming at the end of year!!!! Big thanks to everyone for all of the support. You guys are the best, and I owe it all to you. #blessed #thedream

— chocoTaco (@chocoTaco) November 9, 2017