gaming celebs

All the celebrities you didn’t know were deep in the trenches of the gaming community

From competitive Smash to Final Fantasy love triangles


We’ve come a long way from bullying people who are hardcore gamers. Sure, if you play League of Legends you’re still going to get bullied and that’s justified but with video game discussion getting more mainstream, more celebrities are coming out with their personal favourites.

Some celebrities are so deep in the sauce that they’re even active participants in the community, acting as content creators or ambassadors for E-Sports Teams. So, here are all the surprising celebrities you didn’t know were deep in the trenches of the gaming community:

Asa Butterfield

Let’s just say the smashing he’s doing on Sex Education is not the only kind of smashing in his life. Asa Butterfield is pretty heavily involved with the competitive Super Smash Bros. scene in London.

In a conversation on The Yard podcast, Asa admitted to starting out with competitive Smash around 2017 and was a Pikachu main on Super Smash Bros. 4. Asa Butterfield, who is also a DOTA 2 fan, is pretty invested in the gaming community being a Team Liquid ambassador and even calling out Valve on Twitter for the poor production of the DOTA 2 World Championships.

Henry Cavill

This one is a bit more obvious because of how vocal he is about it, but Henry Cavill is a nerd’s nerd. He plays World of Warcraft, and Skyrim and dabbles in a bit of Warhammer (both tabletop and PC versions). And speaking of PCs, everyone’s seen his famous PC-building Instagram post. The man of steel knows how to assemble his steel.

Iain Stirling

When he’s not the voice on Love Island, comedian Iain Stirling uses his quick wits and cool quips on his Twitch stream where you can catch him playing video games. He had a huge FIFA stream going on during lockdown and was very warmly received by the FIFA community. He still streams every now and then and was recently playing Texas Chainsaw Massacre on Twitch.

Shannon Singh

Love Islander alum and now streamer-model-influencer, Shannon Singh is a big-time Call of Duty fan. She’s a Twitch-partnered streamer, streaming anywhere between two to six times a week, and loves streaming Call of Duty. Shannon might not have found love on the island but she’s definitely found and embraced her love for gaming.

Ariana Grande

Now I know this deep Arianator lore here but Ariana Grande is a big fan of titles like Mario Party, Sackboy Adventures, and Final Fantasy. Her likeness was even used in a mobile version of the Final Fantasy series (I had the character, she was called Dangerous Ariana) and this was way before it was cool to have big celebs tie into your games. I’m looking at you, Mr. Travis Scott.

Robert Pattinson

Robert Pattinson is apparently a massive fan of Final Fantasy VII. During his press tour for Batman, Robert Pattinson had a moment where he was describing the love triangle between Cloud, Tifa, and Aeris to Zoe Kravitz, admitting that Aeris was his first love.

He even dropped the fact that there was a difference in Aeris’ name depending on where you got the game as in some translations her name is Aerith. I’m happy that we as a world have moved on from hearing love triangles and Robert Pattinson in the context of certain unspeakable vampire movies and are now watching him geek out over video games.

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