Demetrious Johnson – “if everybody and their mom keeps playing me, I will get a bigger check”
Former UFC flyweight champion Demetrious Johnson has opened up about his likeness being used in the EA Sports UFC videos games.
“One day I’m at home, I’m playing video games, and I get an email stating that, ‘Hey, since your likeness is being used a lot in the video game, we are sending you a check,’” Johnson said in a video on his YouTube channel. “Now, the very first check I got for being in the UFC video game was $25,000. A lot of you guys are like, ‘That was it?’ Guys, think about this, $25,000 to just be in a video game. I don’t think Ryu [or] Ken has ever gotten a check for $25,000. [It’s] $25,000 for not getting punched in the face, $25,000 for just being in a video game because you people love using me as a character. So I was ecstatic.
“How do they dictate how much money you’re going to get paid? I can’t dictate it. You guys actually dictate how much I get paid by how often you guys use me in the game. When you log onto your game, let’s say you’re playing offline mode or you’re playing online mode, each character you pick, it does a little tick and sends the data to the mainframe computer. That’s how they keep track of it. … They do it for all the games out there because they want to see what characters are being played the most and what game modes you like the most. They’re always tracking your data and keeping all the analytics.
“I think that’s fair. It’s based on your popularity in the game. So if everybody and their mom keeps playing me, I will get a bigger check.”
