In Fortnite the e-sport has taken a hit: This affects the pros. Noah “Vivid” Wright signed a professional contract with Cloud 9 just six months ago, apparently it was for 2 or 3 years. But Cloud 9 has already terminated the contract. Vivid then ended his career as an active pro.
This is Vivid: The 21-year-old Noah Wright was already successful in the early days of Fortnite and quickly became a pro for Team Liquid. He played for the US organization from August 2018.
His biggest successes include several victories in the Summer 2018 Summer Skirmish in North America. At that time, Fortnite looked like the next big thing in e-sports. Developer Epic Games poured massive money into e-sports and held tournaments with high prize money all over the world: At the beginning of 2019, Epic Games stated that they wanted to distribute at least 100 million US dollars in prize money for Fortnite that year.
So far, Vivid has earned about $462,000 with Fortnite. In August 2020, he wanted to take the next career step and switched to Cloud 9, which is one of the largest e-sports organizations in the USA.
Player signs for years, released after months
This is what Vivid says now: Vivid says he was released by his team Cloud 9 on January 2. He was summoned to a meeting the day before and his manager then told him that he would be released. There was no real reason given. The talk was just of “visibility.”
Besides him, Cloud 9 also let Ryan “Chap” Chaplo go, with whom Vivid had previously played at Team Liquid.
Vivid says: He is not angry with Cloud 9, but he finds it just crazy that he signs a contract for 2 to 3 years and then the organization can simply decide to do whatever they want with him.
In hindsight, he now appreciates the people at Team Liquid more. It would have broken his heart when he left the team.
Vivid tells his fans: He lacks the energy to look for a new team, but he doesn’t want to continue as a pro player without a guaranteed income. Therefore, he wants to stream Fortnite and play a bit, but no more scrims and be happy again.
E-sport of Fortnite drops sharply in 2020
This is what it’s about: In 2018 and especially 2019 it looked like Fortnite would be the next big e-sport. Epic pumped massive money into e-sports, regularly held tournaments and organized a big world championship. Teenagers like the world champion Bugha suddenly became stars.
The Fortnite World Championship alone made some teenagers millionaires overnight.
Even before the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, Epic had scaled back its engagement. Apparently, they wanted to develop a new concept and brought in an expert from Activision Blizzard for this. But in 2020, e-sports of Fortnite hardly played a role in the public eye.
It is quite possible that Cloud 9 decided to withdraw resources from Fortnite and invest them in the “proven e-sport” LoL. In League of Legends, the gameplay continued at a high level in 2020. The World Championship could even take place, which received a lot of international attention.
For LoL, Cloud 9 acquired the European superstar Perkz, reportedly paying a transfer fee of 5 million US dollars. Perhaps Cloud 9 had to save elsewhere.
For Vivid, the dismissal from Cloud 9 is obviously a hard setback. The e-sport boom brings a lot of money into the pockets of young people and their parents. For some fathers, it is therefore a goal that their son is right at the forefront of this boom.
Fortnite instead of school: Father raises son to be a pro-gamer since he was 3
