A 16-year-old teenager is the first solo player champion of the recently concluded Fortnite World Cup. Kyle Geirsdorf, popularly known as Bugha, is a professional Fortnite player from Pennsylvania.
Bugha’s also a streamer who loves to show off his competitive skills through his YouTube and Twitch channels. As of writing, Bugha has over 160 thousand subscribers on YouTube and more than 130 thousand on Twitch.
Sunday’s World Cup championship event was the culmination of the weeks-long qualifying tourneys that began last April. According to Fornite creator Epic Games, more than 40 million players from the U.S., Europe, Asia, Brazil, Australia, and New Zealand participated in the qualifying rounds.
Each player can play with a buddy in duos, a team of six in teams, or as a solo player in solos category. All players receive points at the end of each game during the qualifying events based on their rankings and how many eliminations they accumulated.
Solo players or teams with the highest points at the end of six matches are declared winners. However, out of the 40 million gamers who participated, only one now owns the title as the best Fortnite player in the world — Bugha.
Instant Millionaires After Fortnite World Cup Finals
Fortnite World Cup was Epic Games’ first massive Esports event to date. Epic reportedly set aside around $100 million USD to fund prize pools, online activities, and major organized competitions across the globe during the qualifiers.
For the finals held from July 26 to 28 at the Arthur Ashe Stadium in New York City, Epic allegedly set aside $30 million USD for the competing players. It is said to be the largest prize pool in the history of Esports. According to reports, players who qualified for the finals already won $50,000 just for qualifying.
Both the duos and solos events have a prize pool amounting to $3 million USD each. Duos players have to split the prize pool while the solo champion gets to keep the $3 million USD all to himself. That makes the trio instant millionaires following Sunday’s championship games.
Aside from Bugha, other players who successfully secured their places on the top 10 of the final match have taken home between $200,000 USD and $1.8 million USD in prize money. The solo event’s second placer Harrison “Psalm” Chang received $1.8 million USD. He was followed by Shane “EpikWhale” and Nate “Kreo” Kou who both won $1.2 million USD and $1 million USD respectively.
Esports is now one of the fastest rising competitive tournaments in the world. Because of its gaming nature played online, it primarily attracts the attention of players between the age of 12 and 25.
Esports’ popularity has now turned the business into a multi-million dollar industry that is expected to hit $1.7 billion in revenue by 2022.
However, many experts and parents are worried about the negative impact of video games like Fortnite to the mental health of its young players. Researchers and the World Health Organization have already warned parents that too much video gaming could lead to addiction.
Unfortunately, despite various evidence and studies conducted by experts these past years about video game addiction, game developers like Epic Games remain mum about the topic and continue to lure players with massive prize pools and promise of stardom.
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