Jonathan Gaming Hits 8M Subs, Switches to Three-Finger Layout

Jonathan Gaming has crossed 8 million subscribers on YouTube, and he marked the milestone with a Halloween-themed stream on the night of 4 November. His channel showed 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. Jonathan went live dressed as a vampire, in a high-collared cape and red waistcoat, with a Halloween-style cake, friends around him, skeleton props in the background and a live counter ticking past 8,000,000. The thumbnail had already set the mood, with blood-red “8M” lettering, jack-o’-lanterns and a full moon framing him in his number 16 jersey. Clips from the night spread quickly among fans on X, and YouTube’s counter showed the broadcast had passed 2.1 million views by the time it ended.

A million at a time

Jonathan 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”. His 3 million special followed on 22 September 2021 and his 4 million special on 13 April 2022. After that, the pace settled into roughly one million a year: a 5 million celebration stream on 15 April 2023, 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, the longest gap between any two of his milestone celebrations.

From GodLike to team owner

Jonathan Jude Amaral, born 21 September 2002, first made his name with Entity Gaming, winning the PUBG Mobile Club Open 2019 Fall Split: South Asia, according to Liquipedia, and then 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, and 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. 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. Kick is a livestreaming platform launched in 2022 by Stake's founders and owned by Easygo, Stake's parent company, and it competes with Twitch by letting streamers keep 95% of subscription revenue. Even so, the 8 million celebration still went out live on YouTube, the platform where his audience was built. Kick has been building its India ties too: it became Team Apex Gaming's official live-streaming sponsor, announced on 23 September, and was the exclusive streamer for BGMS Season 5. His reach stretches beyond YouTube: his Instagram account has 5 million followers of its own. In January, he 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.

Three fingers now, for shotgun fights

On a live stream, Jonathan said he has moved from the two-finger setup he has used for years to a three-finger layout, and that the switch is mainly about sharpening his shotgun fights. That is a big move for someone who built his game, and a YouTube channel that has just passed 8 million subscribers, on two fingers. He told viewers the new layout is mostly for close-range play. Shotgun fights in BGMI are decided in fractions of a second, and they ask you to do several things at once — move, aim, jump or crouch, and fire, often while peeking a corner. On two fingers, both thumbs have jobs. The left thumb moves and the right thumb aims, so firing or jumping means lifting one of them off what it was doing. A third finger, usually the index on top of the screen, can take over one of those actions, letting a player keep aiming while shooting — exactly what close-range fights reward.

Jonathan was clear that the switch will not pay off right away. He said it will take time before he can use the new layout properly, because he has to build fresh muscle memory and get used to where everything now sits on the screen. Anyone who has changed a control layout knows the feeling. Buttons you used to hit without looking are suddenly in the wrong place, and old habits keep pulling you back. For a while a player can feel worse on the new setup than the old one. He did not put a timeline on the switch, so there is no date by which we should expect the new layout to click. For now his streams are the place to watch the change happen in real time. If his shotgun fights start going his way more often in the coming weeks, that will be the sign the three-finger switch is working.

What it means for his fans

Jonathan is one of the most-watched BGMI players in India, and a lot of younger players copy his settings. A switch from someone with his following could push more of them to try three fingers, or at least rethink their own layout. If you want to try it yourself, the custom layout editor in BGMI's settings lets you move the fire and scope buttons to the top of the screen. KRAFTON India's official site carries the game's latest updates.