system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
[Ready Player One movie] Why is Wade poor, despite being a skilled gamer

We know in the RPO world Oasis is THE thing in society, so skilled gamers are probably the hottest commodity even more so than doctors, engineers etc.

Wade doesn't want to sell out to IOI, but there are plenty of other ways utilizing his skills, like grinding credits in deathmatch, races or other tournaments and exchange them for real money. He can be a esports player, or a twitch streamer, or a trader, all of those things he could probably do with his knowledge and skill of the game, so why is he still living in a trailer park at the beginning of the movie?

 I get that he wants to find the easter egg, but why couldn't he provide for himself and his aunt in the mean time?
gpt
He is a skilled gamer, but lacks the right equipment to actually compete.

The only thing that he has (and the only reason he has it) is a basic connection to the Oasis for school. The bare minimal hardware requirement. He's not able to compete actively in games because he is using the default wireless link to the Oasis, while all of the active pro gamers use a direct fiber connection to the Oasis circle. He does compete and collect some credits from smaller tournaments, and he does grind out some credits, but credits to real world currency isn't favorable enough to let him actually support a family, and is instead used to simply sustain a life in the Oasis, which has plenty of credit sinks.

If he had better equipment/connection, he would probably be in the same situation as his best friend, being a good gamer that lives okay using funds from competing. He was born too poor to have that luxury.