- Marko Uslinkovski is a 36 year old professional gamer from North Macedonia
- He says his company can generate $50,000 a month in revenue by defeating tough bosses
If you grew up with an obsession with gaming, you were Chances are that several family members have told you that you’ll never make a living playing video games all day.
While that was once true, there is now a growing industry of professional gamers for hire who make big bucks using their hard-earned skills.
Marko Uslinkovski is a 36-year-old professional gamer from North Macedonia who makes a living playing games for people who don’t have time to play them themselves.
With a team of 50 ‘boosters’, Marko told MailOnline his company, Captain Carry, can generate $30,000 to $50,000 in revenue in a good month.
Marko told MailOnline: ‘These new games are extremely difficult, so we are a kind of last resort for people who are on the verge of giving up.’
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Like so many others who have had a lifelong passion for video games, Marko was hooked from the start.
His father, a technology enthusiast who enjoyed solving quantum physics equations for fun, bought Marko and his brother a Commodore 64 when he was only six years old.
While his father had hoped that Marko would learn more about circuit boards and code, he and his brother instead spent hours playing competitive video games.
He recalls: ‘We fought about everything, and in video games you can play against each other without getting bruises.’
By the time he and his brother entered high school, they had quickly become top players in early online video games like DOTA.
But at the time, this was not exactly seen as a route to a successful career.
Marko says: ’25 years ago, nobody wanted to pay you to play video games because there was no market for it.
‘In high school, of course, I was judged because I played video games all the time.
“There’s no money, no recognition, you’re locked in your room; so people start to worry.”
But thanks to what Marko calls his stubbornness, he persevered and continued playing video games throughout his school years.
“When there is a football tournament, it happens on a big field, with people, popcorn, and so on,” he says.
‘In video games, we’re basically locked in a basement with bad air quality and ten people are sitting around a PC. It’s a sad picture.
“If you look from the outside, it’s bad. But there was a lot going on on the screens and in our brains.”
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And if one very important game hadn’t been released, Marko might never have left that poorly ventilated basement.
In May 2012, Blizzard Entertainment released Diablo 3, a game in which players had to guide their characters through deadly dungeons and hordes of enemies.
What made Diablo 3 different from previous games was its brutal, over-the-top, and arguably unfair difficulty curve.
The game’s hardest mode, called “infernal difficulty,” was so challenging that players needed extremely rare and powerful items to stand a chance.
However, the chances of these objects ‘falling’ are astronomically small: they may only appear 0.001 percent of the time.
This created a thriving market for those with the skills and free time to battle their way through Diablo 3’s most challenging dungeons.
The game even had a virtual marketplace called the “Real Money Auction House,” where players could list gear for up to $250 each and get paid via PayPal.
However, this $250 limit couldn’t prevent prices of some items on unofficial forums from skyrocketing.
In one case, Marko sold a single off-hand sword to another fan for $9,000.
Blizzard would eventually close the auction house and end the Diablo 3 boom, but not before Marko realized he could make gaming his full-time job.
Marko and his brother have renamed their Diablo 3 website to ‘Captain Carry’ and are now selling services for a wide range of different video games.
Customers pay Marko and his team to log into their accounts, allowing them to level up characters, obtain rare in-game items, and even defeat bosses.
Over the years, he has deployed about 2,000 different “boosters,” as he calls the company’s employees. freelance pro gamers, but usually has about 50 available on call at any one time.
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Not every video game has the right mix of longevity and difficulty to be a perfect target for Marko’s services, and the company’s revenue can vary widely.
Marko says: ‘If it’s summer, there are no new video games and people are on vacation, that’s a recipe for inactivity in video games.
‘Sometimes the amount can be between 10,000 and 50,000 euros, but the profit margin can sometimes be as much as 10 percent, because you spent more on advertising.’
However, recent developments in the world of video games have led to an explosion in demand for Marko’s services.
In 2022, legendary game designer Hidetaka Miyazaki teamed up with Game of Thrones author George RR Martin to create a game of epic proportions.
Marko says: ‘Elden Ring is one of those games where everything is right.
“In the food industry, if there’s sugar and salt in something, that hits the dopamine receptors. In video games, we want the content to be both beautiful and difficult.”
Elden Ring’s extreme skill requirements and near-vertical learning curve have earned it a legendary reputation.
The game’s recent expansion, titled ‘Shadow of the Erdtree’, takes that difficulty to almost absurd extremes.
According to Marko, even experienced players sometimes have to spend up to 30 hours in-game leveling up and finding gear just to beat the simplest bosses.
That difficulty level means that most players simply don’t have the time to play the game and truly enjoy it.
Marko says: ‘Some of our customers are professionals, like doctors or lawyers, and they simply don’t have time to play games for five hours a day.
“They come to us so that when the weekend comes, they can get started right away and play in a certain zone or with a certain boss.”
Other customers might want to play with their friends, but they don’t have time to reach their friends’ level. In that case, they can ask Marko for help.
Players pay $6.49 to have someone from Marko’s team log in and defeat the final boss for them.
Or, for an additional fee, they can play co-op with one of the pros or even watch a live stream of Marko’s boosters defeating the final boss on their account.
Players can also pay up to $8 for a specific in-game item or up to $220 to level up their character to max level.
While it may seem strange to spend your money on this, Marko says he saves players weeks of work and lets them enjoy their games without wasting their time.
He says: ‘It’s like going to the dentist: if you want to fix your teeth yourself, you need all kinds of equipment and you have to go through a lot of pain, but we can just be there and do it in 15 minutes.’
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But like any job, full-time gaming also has its drawbacks.
The biggest problem for Marko is the unsocial hours that come with working as an on-call gamer.
He says, “Because most of your customers are in the U.S., you start working around 5 p.m. The hours you have to sleep are also the best hours to work, because around 1 a.m. the West Coast starts coming home from work.”
Marko says he also worries about the potential long-term effects that spending hours in front of the computer could have on him.
Additionally, the site has been the victim of multiple cyberattacks, including a DDOS campaign by Russian hackers, all adding to the stress of running a small business.
But in the end, according to Marko, all these disadvantages are worth it, so that you can make gaming your profession.
“It’s not like I miss much. I don’t really have a nightlife, but what is it, apart from drinking alcohol, driving fast and beating people up?” he said.
‘I think I’ve been lucky with my character traits. I was a bit antisocial as a child, but now I can justify not going somewhere because I can say I have to work.’
And while a steady job with a stable income is attractive, Marko doesn’t seem to be that concerned with making money.
“I know there are companies that make more money, but I’m not that type. I prefer growing vegetables in my garden and taking care of animals,” he added.
‘I grew up in a village, so I didn’t dream of becoming rich. I think that’s the stupidest dream you can have.
“It’s all about video games. Even if I made 10 percent of my income, I would use it to make gaming my career.”