Jonathan Gaming has crossed 8 million subscribers on YouTube, and the Team Apex Gaming founder marked the moment by turning his milestone stream into a full Halloween party. He went live on the night of 4 November dressed as a vampire, and his channel was showing 8.02 million subscribers as the broadcast wrapped up in the early hours of 5 November.
The stream, titled “8 MILLION SPECIAL | JONATHAN IS BACK! | BGMI!”, started just after 9pm IST on his main channel and ran for five and a half hours. Its thumbnail had already set the mood, with blood-red “8M” lettering, jack-o’-lanterns and a full moon framing Jonathan in his number 16 jersey.
Clips from the night spread quickly among fans on X. They show Jonathan in a high-collared cape and red waistcoat, a Halloween-style cake, friends crowding around him, skeleton props in the background and a live counter ticking past 8,000,000.
The celebration also drew a big audience of its own, since YouTube’s counter showed the broadcast had passed 2.1 million views by the time it ended. For a creator who now splits his time between competing and running an organisation, that suggests his core audience has stayed with him through a year of upheaval.
Eight million subscribers, one celebration stream at a time
Jonathan’s growth is unusually easy to track, because he has marked almost every million with a special video or stream on his channel. His 1 million special went up on 8 July 2020, and he celebrated 2 million live on 10 March 2021.
The next day, he told fans in a post on X that reaching a “2 Million naughty family” was “a dream come true”. The jumps that followed came quickly, with his 3 million special on 22 September 2021 and his 4 million special on 13 April 2022.
After that, the pace settled into roughly one million a year. He held his 5 million celebration stream on 15 April 2023, followed by 6 million on 25 June 2024 and 7 million on 8 June 2025. Going by those dates, the climb from 7 million to 8 million took close to 17 months, which is the longest gap between any two of his milestone celebrations. It also covered the most turbulent stretch of his competitive career so far.
How 2026 turned GodLike’s star into a team owner
Born Jonathan Jude Amaral on 21 September 2002, he first made his name with Entity Gaming, winning the PUBG Mobile Club Open 2019 Fall Split: South Asia, according to Liquipedia. He then lifted the PUBG Mobile India Series 2020 title with TSM Entity in July of that year.
He joined GodLike Esports in August 2021 and spent almost five years as the face of the organisation. Liquipedia credits him with second place at the BGMI Masters Series 2022, third at BMPS 2024 and second at BGIS 2025, where he was also named Finals MVP. Across those years, Liquipedia puts his approximate career prize winnings at $123,193.
That run ended this spring, after he was benched during the BGIS 2026 Survival Stage for the first time in his career. He left GodLike in early April and launched Team Apex Gaming on 12 April with a video called “It’s Time to Rise | TAGonTOP”.
TAG finished fifth at BMPS 2026 in June, where Jonathan also picked up The Eliminator award, but the team then missed BMIC 2026 after placing tenth at the BMSD Grand Finals in October. Soon afterwards, Red Bull India signed a partnership with the organisation on 19 October, extending a relationship that had previously run through Jonathan alone. The choice of platform for the party stood out as well. On his 24th birthday, 21 September, Jonathan announced on Instagram that he was “officially the face of Kick” and told fans he would see them there. Even so, the 8 million celebration still went out live on YouTube, the platform where his audience was built.
His reach also stretches well beyond YouTube, since his Instagram account has 5 million followers of its own. In January, he also won Influencer of the Year, Fans’ Choice Favourite Creator of the Year (Male) and Fans’ Choice Favourite Esports Player of the Year at the inaugural Krafton India Awards in Mumbai.
Only days before the milestone, BMIC 2026 champions NS RedForce spent the night of their title win as guests at Jonathan’s gaming house, swapping jerseys with the TAG owner before heading home to Korea. You can follow the rest of his career on his TalkEsport wiki profile. Team Apex Gaming are already back in competition at the Chennai Esports Global Championship 2026, where Jonathan is registered as an assaulter in Group A of the 32-team BGMI field.
