In 2019, the online shooter Fortnite: Battle Royale was the hottest game on the planet, and talented young gamers could earn a lot of money from the game. A single mother from England decided at that time to take her 15-year-old son Benjy David Fish out of school so he would have more time for Fortnite. We at MeinMMO look at how the now 20-year-old is doing in 2024.
This was the situation with Fortnite in 2019:
The online shooter from Epic Games, Fortnite: Save the World, was released in 2017 but had actually already failed. Therefore, Epic Games developed a variant of the game that was heavily inspired by PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds. They knew how to do this because Epic Games built the Unreal Engine, which also runs PUBG.
This new variant, Fortnite: Battle Royale, proved to be a hit that conquered the world in 2018.
With Fortnite, one could earn a lot of money in 2019, provided they were good enough: Anyone who qualified for the World Cup individually received $50,000. Even $100,000 if they qualified in both the solo discipline and in duo.
So, the mother of a talented English boy decided to take her teenage son out of regular school. He played Fortnite with online friends in the USA at night and was always tired during the day in school.
The first big check came from MontanaBlack when he was only 14
This is how the mother decided: The then 14-year-old won $10,000 at a tournament of the German streamer MontanaBlack in February 2019 together with the 14-year-old Norwegian MrSavage (via reddit). That was his first big payday.
But while things were going so well online, it became rougher for Benjy Fish in the real world: His mother Anne had constant disagreements with her son during this time because he stayed up at night to play Fortnite with his friends in the USA and was then tired in school.
His mother waited until Benjy qualified for the lucrative World Cup in Fortnite and had signed with an e-sports team: Then she decided to take the boy out of school and have him taught at home, but with a relaxed curriculum. The material that is taught in school in 2 years should be taught to her son in 3 years.
The idea was to let the boy learn on his own time and to subordinate everything to the fact that he played with players from the USA at night.
At that time, the mother had already been through a long and hard time: Her husband David had passed away when Benjy was only 8 months old, and she was a single mother of 2 young sons. Charles was 7 years older than Benjy and had introduced him to gaming.
Benjy was into shooters from an early age and had already played Call of Duty, Halo, and Counter-Strike extensively before he started with Fortnite. He got his first laptop at the age of 9.
At 15, Benjy is very successful in Fortnite and builds a Twitch channel
This is how it went for the 15-year-old at the beginning: Initially, the mother’s decision paid off fully, as Fortnite dished out high profits in 2019 and 2020:
At 15, benjyfishy earned $392,447 in prize money from Fortnite (before taxes and deductions). However, his performance in the World Cup itself wasn’t so great. He narrowly missed placements that would have brought him higher prize money in his solo and duo appearances.
At 16, he secured $147,176 in prize money.
Additionally, benjyfishy was able to build a successful Twitch channel. He had an average of 24,000 viewers on Twitch in 2020. With that, he surely generated high earnings as well.
2021 brought a break: prize money collapsed
When did things start to go wrong? In 2021, benjyfishy was 17 and revenues from Fortnite collapsed. The team at Epic Games realized that e-sports wasn’t as profitable as originally thought. During the pandemic, large events weren’t possible anymore. Something like the big live event such as the Fortnite World Cup in 2019 would never happen again.
The prize money for benjyfishy collapsed:
- At 17, he only earned 28,395 euros in prize money from Fortnite.
- When he turned 18, there was only 3,053 euros left for him – that was about one hundredth of what he could earn at 15.
His viewer numbers on Twitch also did not look as fantastic as in the golden years for a long time.
At 18, Benjy quits Fortnite – Against his mother’s will
This was his risky step: The love for Fortnite had also faded by then. In 2022, the now 18-year-old announced that his time with Fortnite was over and that he wanted to turn to the new shooter Valorant from Riot Games. That was a risky move at the time because it’s known that Twitch viewers who know a player for just one game quickly disappear when they switch games.
His mother did not like that at all. She wanted to convince her son to continue playing Fortnite alongside Valorant, but Benjy remained stubborn: He simply couldn’t play Fortnite anymore and needed to focus entirely on one game.
How did that develop? In Valorant, he consciously joined a second-rate team because he wanted to earn a chance and not benefit from his big name from Fortnite.
At first, things didn’t look so good; in his first year with Valorant, when he was 19, he could only win about €3,500 in prize money.
His Twitch channel also performed as poorly as expected. He had an average of only 2,300 viewers and streamed significantly less than before.
In 2024, Benjy makes a breakthrough in the new game and has his best year in a long time
But in 2024, at 20 years old, the tide turns for benjyfishy. After 4 years of declining prize money and his channel shrinking, he managed to turn things around in 2024.
The 20-year-old found a strong team in Valorant and secured at least second place in 3 tournaments:
With €121,000 in prize money, he had his best year in a long time and proved that he has enough talent to be successful in 2 titles.
His Twitch channel has also recovered somewhat, although he no longer streams as much and is not as big as during his golden Fortnite days.
But overall, benjyfishy seems to be happy now: In Valorant, he found a new home with the team Heretics and travels around the world in e-sports, but at Christmas, he still enjoys being in England with his mom, who is clearly very satisfied with her decision.
The mother now works in e-sports and is proud of her son
This is how his mother is doing: The mother now has her own YouTube channel with “MamaBenjyifishy” and works as an “e-sports consultant.” Since March 2023, she even has her own skin bundle in Fortnite, which sells for 2,000 V-Bucks (about €18).
In a YouTube video, Anne Fish says she misses having her son always around and the time when he lived in her house, and she could hear the sounds from his room.
However, she did not miss having to wake the boy up regularly because he had stayed up all night gaming again. Those wild times are fortunately long gone: What happened to the 16-year-old who suddenly won $3 million at the Fortnite World Cup?
