Tony Hawk is without a doubt one of the most influential skateboarders ever. Having now been retired from competing professionally for the past two decades, he’s an absolute legend.
But it’s not just the skills on the boards he’s known for, but there’s his various other projects such as his Pro Skater video games.
First released in 1999, Hawk says the series ‘changed his life’.
Since then, there’s been five versions of Pro Skater (as well as a few more video games) with his skate boarding games available to play across PlayStation, Xbox and other platforms.
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At its core, Pro Skater invites gamers to take control of various famous skateboarders – including Hawk – and complete missions by performing tricks and collecting items.
The 55-year-old has a place in the Skateboarding Hall of Fame, a string of sponsorships, competition titles and more.
And he’s made millions from Pro Skater alone.
Appearing on The Nine Club podcast in 2018, Hawk was asked by the hosts how much he was paid for the Pro Skater series of games.
While the Californian was hesitant to reveal the full details, he said: “I will give you this: when the fourth game was released my main contact at Activision asked to have lunch with me in LA when I was there one day. He’s not the head but he’s definitely the guy overseeing our games.
“He’s like, ‘Here’s what’s happening, we’re releasing the fourth game. The last three are still in the top 10 of sales, one is going into…’ I forgot what they call it, it’s like classics mode which means they sell it at a certain price but way more volume.
"He’s like ‘so things are way bigger than you ever thought’.”
Hawk then revealed that during the lunch with the contact from the video game publisher, he was ‘handed a check for $4 million’.
Although it’s likely this is nowhere near the full amount the skateboarder has now made from the full video game series, the hosts laughed as they joked whether or not he would just take it to a nearby ATM: “What do you do with that?”
And down-to-earth Hawk revealed: “I might have put it in the ATM. I’m not kidding, I was always on the go back then. I was just like alright, here we go.
“No, I don’t want to downplay that. It changed my life, the video game changed my life.”
Jess Battison