How Much Are They Worth?
Celebrity fortunes, explained
How did Arteezy build this fortune?
The answer unfolds through the career, earnings, deals and assets behind the headline estimate.
Before the fame
The background and early turning points that shaped Arteezy’s route to prominence.
Babaev was born on July 1, 1996, in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, to parents of Russian and Armenian descent. The family relocated to the Vancouver area of Canada when he was about two years old, and he has an older brother, Tigran. Wikipedia’s biography notes that Russian was spoken at home but that he now only understands it conversationally, reflecting how thoroughly the family assimilated after emigrating to North America.
Before turning professional, Babaev played the original DotA and competed in StarCraft II as a Protoss player who reached Masters rank, then climbed public Dota 2 leaderboards to the top matchmaking rating as an unsigned “pubstar.” His paid career began in April 2013 with the roster Kaipi, and Liquipedia’s player history records his breakout LAN result in November 2013, when he stood in for Speed Gaming at MLG Columbus and beat established mid-laners including Mushi and Dendi on the way to an upset final win over Team DK.
That Speed Gaming run is also where his name enters the official earnings record. Esports Earnings’ team-by-team breakdown credits him with $13,676.20 from that single tournament, a modest figure next to his later career but the first dollar amount formally tied to his professional play.
The breakthrough years
The career decisions and defining moments that turned recognition into sustained earning power.
In January 2014, Babaev joined offlaner Saahil “UNiVeRsE” Arora and three others to form the roster nicknamed S A D B O Y S. Evil Geniuses, one of North America’s oldest and most established esports organizations according to its own competitive history, signed the roster the following month, beginning a relationship that would account for the large majority of Babaev’s career winnings over the following decade.
The breakthrough result came almost immediately: Evil Geniuses finished third at The International 2014 for a team prize of $1,038,416, an event that put a teenage Babaev on the sport’s biggest stage in only his second year as a professional.
What the work can earn
Reported pay, contracts, royalties and performance income reveal how the fortune was funded.
Career-wide, Esports Earnings’ full profile credits Babaev with $2,714,369.91 in prize money from 127 tournaments, ranking him 35th all-time globally and first among Canadian players. That is a gross, pre-tax, pre-organizational-split figure tied to tournament results only, not a net worth number.
Esports Earnings’ prize-by-result data shows his individual share of that 2014 International third-place finish at $207,691, and his single best payday came four years later at The International 2018, another third-place finish worth $536,175.80 to him personally. Across seven career International appearances he earned roughly $1.38 million combined, alongside titles at ESL One Frankfurt 2015 and the Shanghai Major 2016.
Inside the Dota 2 community, Babaev is recognized less for a single trophy and more for longevity and mechanical skill. Liquipedia’s player page records him as the second player in Dota 2 history to reach 9,000 matchmaking rating in 2016 and the third to reach 10,000 in 2017, benchmarks that underpinned his reputation as one of the most technically gifted carry and mid players of his generation.
That in-game reputation carried over into streaming. Wikipedia puts his Twitch following at roughly 835,000 and his YouTube subscriber count near 32,000, and notes a 2024 nomination for Best MOBA Streamer at The Streamer Awards, evidence that his public profile has outlasted his competitive peak.
The business beyond the main career
Endorsements, ownership interests and investments can keep compounding long after the initial breakthrough.
Babaev does not have publicly reported personal endorsement contracts with consumer brands, unlike some higher-profile esports and streaming stars. His commercial exposure over the years came primarily through team-level sponsorships that organizations such as Evil Geniuses, described in its own competitive history as “one of the most premier gaming organisations that exist today,” carried on jerseys and broadcasts, with players sharing in that branding rather than negotiating individual deals of their own.
Babaev has not been reported to run or co-found any company outside competitive Dota 2 and content creation. His commercial activity is best described as a personal media business built over more than a decade of near-continuous broadcasting, now spread across Twitch, YouTube and Kick rather than a single platform.
The clearest evidence of that shift is in his own results. Esports Earnings’ year-by-year breakdown shows tournament income falling from a career-high $652,575.80 in 2018 to just $23,500 across four tournaments in 2024, the same year Liquipedia’s Shopify Rebellion roster history records him stepping down from the team’s active lineup on July 23, 2024, before becoming fully unaffiliated on April 3, 2025, a competitor-to-creator transition rather than a move into a separate business.
Notable luxury item
A reported property or major asset offers a tangible glimpse of the wealth behind the public estimate.
No real estate, vehicles or other major personal purchases have been publicly reported for Babaev. That absence is itself worth noting given how detailed the public record otherwise is: his Wikipedia biography documents his career results, streaming statistics and even his December 2024 engagement to fellow content creator Zhang Tiange in specific detail, yet it, like the wider esports press, discloses no property or asset ownership. HMW treats this as an unknown rather than assuming a figure, and does not add a speculative property allowance to the estimate below.
Arteezy’s estimated net worth
Public estimates vary because private contracts, investments, taxes and liabilities are not fully disclosed.
How this estimate is calculated
The only rigorously documented number in Babaev’s finances is tournament prize money, and even that needs adjustment before it can stand in for net worth. Esports Earnings’ team breakdown shows $2,203,600.63 of his $2.71 million career total, or roughly 81 percent, came through Evil Geniuses alone. That figure is gross and pre-tax; Dota 2 team contracts typically route a share of prize winnings through the organization before a player receives their portion, and Canadian income tax further reduces what is actually retained, so the headline prize total materially overstates take-home cash.
Against that discount, HMW adds two undisclosed but well-evidenced income streams: multi-year team salary from Evil Geniuses, his primary employer for the bulk of a decade, and streaming revenue from a Twitch and YouTube presence that has run continuously since 2014 and now spans hundreds of thousands of followers. Neither figure is public, so both are treated conservatively rather than assumed at top-tier League of Legends or CS2 levels, particularly since his own tournament income declined sharply after 2018 as he shifted focus toward broadcasting. Combining a taxed and discounted prize record with a moderate allowance for a decade of salary and streaming income, and applying no property or business-equity allowance given the lack of any disclosed assets, produces the estimate below.
There is no publicly documented record of a personal charitable foundation, named donation drive or philanthropic initiative attached to Babaev individually. His public image instead rests on a reputation built inside the game itself: Liquipedia and the wider esports press consistently frame him as one of the most naturally talented and well-liked veterans in North American Dota 2, respected by peers and fans across more than a decade in the public eye.
His most visible personal milestone in recent years has been relationship news rather than business or charity news: he began dating Chinese content creator and caster Zhang Tiange, known as Dove, in 2017, and the couple became engaged on December 29, 2024, a development his stream and social audience followed closely.
Babaev has no reported scandals, legal disputes or off-platform incidents. The closest thing to public scrutiny in his career was professional rather than personal: his repeated moves between Evil Geniuses and Team Secret drew criticism about roster stability. ESPN’s report on the March 2016 switch to Team Secret, his second departure from Evil Geniuses in just over a year, describes an organization dealing with reports of “internal conflict” and notes the shuffle left two of his former teammates scrambling for new rosters days before a registration deadline, the kind of competitive-integrity story that generated fan and analyst debate at the time without ever becoming a personal scandal.
His 2024 step-back from Shopify Rebellion’s active roster was reported as a voluntary shift toward streaming rather than a release or falling-out, and it drew no comparable scrutiny.