News game His mother takes him away from school at 15 so he has more time to play Fortnite and earn money
Published on 26/12/2022 at 11:39
This story is absolutely insane. In May 2019, she went around the web and many wanted to know the fate of the kid concerned. Seeing that her son, Benjy, was excelling at Fortnite, his mom made a controversial decision to pull him out of school. This is how the aptly named “Benjyfishy” (contraction between his first name and his last name Fish), a 15-year-old Briton, was able to devote himself full-time to his performance as a gamer. More than three and a half years later, what happened to this bet? We tell you.
By making this decision, Mrs. Fish had no intention of cutting off her son Benjy’s school career. While indulging in Fortnite, the teenager aimed to take home-schooling and graduate in three years – instead of two through a regular school program. The trigger for this decision was the money gleaned by her child in record time. During a Fornite online tournament, he won the sum of 11,300 euros and the game quickly became an “obsession”. As Benjyfishy played with American friends, the jet lag meant that he exercised during the night. Often exhausted at school, he could not keep up with the pace of lessons and his mother decided to withdraw him from the traditional school course.
A winning bet for Benjifishy
You are probably wondering if the choice was positive. And according to the site Mein-mmo.de, Benjifishy’s career literally took off. Between the age of 15 and the age of 18, the young Brit earned 570,256 dollars, or around 535,000 euros. Propelled onto the esports scene, the teenager, who became a young adult, never obtained significant victories (25th in individual, 14th in duo), but his performances allowed him to earn very good sums. Benjifishy thus benefited from the rise of Fortnite on the esports scene before seeing its income drop due to the decline in popularity of the online FPS. That still gives some pretty big numbers!
At 15, he won $392,447 At 16, he pocketed $147,176 At 17, he won $15,735 At 18, he had to settle for $1,500
His career was therefore quite short-lived, but Benjyfishy, who intended to buy a house for his mother, was able to put a nice sum aside. Fortnite’s aura in the esports scene has drastically diminished resulting in a huge drop in revenue. The interested party criticized this situation and he made the decision, in 2022, to leave Fortnite to get into Valorant. In December 2022, he left his NRG esports team and is currently looking for a team specializing in Valorant. In terms of community, the boy is followed by more than 3.9 million followers on Twitch, but these are now rare with the decline in popularity of Fortnite (4,845 over the last 365 days).
In the end, as the site Mein-mmo.de reports, the decision to leave school was positive on a purely financial level, but the career – which was far from easy – was only ephemeral. What this story shows us is that the online gaming megastars of one day are not the ones of tomorrow. By focusing on a single title, here Fortnite, Benjyfishy, like many others, has seen his popularity decline in parallel with that of the game. It is sometimes a risk to take, but it shows that we must constantly renew, regardless of its level of success. The Mein-mmo.de site also draws an interesting parallel with Ninja, absolute Twitch megastar a few years ago, and much more discreet today (3,500th in terms of average audience on the platform now) .
In the space of a few years, Benjyfishy has seen his income melt in proportion to the decline in popularity of Fortnite. But unlike others who have failed to become pro-gamer, the Briton has won a lot of money and we hope for him that he will succeed in doing as well on Valorant.
