In 2019, the then 15-year-old student Benjyfishy showed so much talent for the online shooter Fortnite that his mother took him out of school. How is the now 19 year old? Benjyfishy?
This was the situation in 2019:
Mom takes 15-year-old son out of school so he has time for Fortnite – Here’s how it went for him
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Son plays Fortnite at night, is tired at school – Mom takes him out of school
This was the mother’s decision: When her then 15-year-old son won around €11,300 in a Fortnite tournament, the mother decided that her son should no longer attend normal classes and would rather be taught at home. There he would learn in 3 years the material that took him 2 years at school.
The mother’s idea was that the son had a lot to do with Fortnite players in the USA from England, so he played at night and was often tired at school.
Career is going great at 15 – a hit on Twitch at 16
How did things go for the boy at first? At the start of his e-sports career in 2019, things were going really well for the boy. The prize money he won alone is equivalent to many times an average annual salary:
But by the age of 17, the e-sports prize money was already thinning out. Fortnite e-sports slowed down, something like the 2019 Fortnite World Cup never happened again. Covid also struck.
Fortnite prize money plummeted in 2019 and then it just got worse:
But at least the boy was able to build up a relatively large channel on Twitch with his skills in Fortnite:
In 2022, the love for Fortnite faded and with it the great career
How did it go later?? The love for Fortnite disappeared by 2022 at the latest, when Benjyfishy announced the end of his career in Fortnite and now wanted to dedicate himself to Riot Games’ shooter Valorant.
But now a rude awakening came in 2023: Because at Valorant, his 4 million followers on Twitch, who subscribed to him mainly because of Fortnite, hardly want to see him anymore:
He will have significantly more success in 2023 when he plays Fortnite.
Benjyfishy is now a Valorant pro in Spain
Can he still make a living from gaming? Valorant e-sports aren’t really successful either: it’s not for solo fighters, Valorant is a team sport. The now 19-year-old Brit has found accommodation with “Team Heretics” in Spain.
It is not known how much salary the club pays him: In 2023, e-sports will generally be in the so-called “e-sports winter”, a global downturn – millions will not flow there.
Benjyfishy mainly plays second and third class tournaments for a few thousand US dollars in prize money – and even then only rarely.
Although Benjyfishy will probably still be able to make a living from gaming with a professional contract and a moderately running Twitch channel, it can no longer be compared to the glory days as a teenager.
But he seems to have found some luck in Madrid, so he has currently extended it until 2025 and is probably planning to stay in Madrid, even if he flies back to England for the holidays:
Success with Fortnite was great, but apparently not sustainable
This is what lies behind it: The example of Benjyfishy shows how short-lived the hype in e-sports and gaming can be. Although Benjyfishy certainly earned enough prize money in the first few years after his mother took him out of school to justify his mother’s decision. His success on Twitch also looked impressive in the first few months after he left school.
But now it seems as if her career isn’t exactly sustainable. The decision to change the game in particular is a high risk for an e-athlete and Twitch streamer that doesn’t seem to be paying off at the moment. But he probably had to change, he just didn’t want to play Fortnite anymore.
While Cody “Clix” Conrad, now 18, has stayed with Fortnite and can barely run because of money, things are likely to be different for Benjyfishy.
From Fortnite prodigy to number 151 on Valorant Twitch
The problem for e-athletes is that the clock is ticking: the career for e-athletes is short. In the long term, it would probably be more important for the Twitch channel to run better again, but it has been on a downward trend for several years now.
At Valorant, other streamers like Tarik are popular, and not a former Fortnite prodigy. Benjyfishy is currently ranked 151st among the largest Valorant channels – even HasanAbi is far from him, and he is actually a political commentator and only showed 80 hours of Valorant in 2023.
Other people from the Fortnite era at least managed to snag a big YouTube contract when Fortnite stopped working:
19-year-old became a star on Twitch with Fortnite – today he hardly has any viewers and thinks it’s completely okay