At 16, the American Kyle “Bugha” Giersdorf was already set: he participated in the Fortnite World Championship in the summer of 2019 and managed to win the grand prize: a whopping 3 million US dollars. But how has the career of this shooting star progressed since then?
How did Bugha win the 3 million US dollars?
- The Fortnite World Championship took place on a single day, July 28, 2019, in New York: 100 players managed to qualify for the Solo World Championship through online tournaments over weeks: Twitch star Ninja consistently failed to qualify at that time and became somewhat more desperate week by week.
- The winner of the championship was determined in 6 rounds where all 100 candidates competed against each other. Bugha was able to win the 1st game immediately and secured 9 kills – he did not win in the other 5 games, but collected a lot of points by staying alive for a long time and making it to the endgame.
- In the end, Bugha secured 59 points. He was far ahead of the second player, Psalm, who only scored 33 points. Bugha won 3 million US dollars that one day – almost half of which probably went to taxes, but it was still an enormous sum for the 16-year-old.
Never again was there so much prize money in Fortnite
Did he continue to win money afterwards? Bugha was still successful in Fortnite in his further career after 2019 and achieved good placements. However, he never came close to matching his huge win from 2019 again, as Fortnite has not been about such high sums as in the World Championship for a long time. It was a unique experience (via esportearnings):
- In 2019, Bugha won, including the Fortnite World Championship: 3.07 million US dollars
- In 2020, it was 94,020 US dollars
- In 2021, it was 171,450 US dollars
- In 2022, Bugha won 154,675 US dollars
At the World Championship, Bugha won 3 million $. In the 4 years surrounding it, there were “only” 492,986 $ in prize money.
Why was there never as much money as for Bugha again? Epic never held such a large event with so much prize money again after the Fortnite World Championship; instead, E-Sports fragmented, moved online, and held many tournaments throughout the year for smaller prize amounts.
Epic Games itself cited “Covid” as the reason that no World Championship was held live on-site anymore.
In fact, the World Championship also proved to be a structural problem for Fortnite, everything revolved around that one day in July for a year. While the hype was relatively high before and during the World Championship, interest in Fortnite dropped significantly after the championship was played.
This was apparently a problem for Epic Games because Epic Games presumably wants Fortnite to be especially relevant at Christmas, when wallets are loose and kids mass-buy new skins. A peak of interest in Fortnite in July and a drop in interest afterwards was not really in the interest of Epic Games. However, the World Championship caused just that decline in interest.
In hindsight, there were large doubts about whether everything at the World Championship was “clean”
This could be the real reason why there was never another World Championship like it: There were also considerable doubts about the competitive integrity of the event afterwards: Many who made a big profit at the World Championship trained with a 19-year-old coach, Hugh Gilmour, also known as Destinyjesus. His “pupils” won 17 million out of 30 million $ at the World Championship.
There were serious suspicions that the coaching mainly consisted of the coach’s players making agreements about where to land on the map and how their paths from there should look. The goal could have been for the coach’s players to stay out of each other’s way for as long as possible during the Fortnite World Championship and thus increase their chances of winning.
In Fortnite, the player with the highest chance of winning is the one who survives long and does not waste his resources in fights with equally strong top players. Thus, at the World Championship, players who played defensively and did not engage in every fight won, while hot-blooded gunslingers secured many kills but also dropped out of a round early.
While it was never clearly established how much manipulation was at play, there is surely a reason why Epic Games limited it to a single World Championship: The “Battle Royale” format is simply too susceptible to manipulations and collusion.
Bugha manages to break into the top 50 on Twitch with the Fortnite victory behind him
How did it go for Bugha outside of E-Sports? Like many E-Sports players in Fortnite, Bugha is active on Twitch, where he had almost no viewers before the World Championship. However, right after the success of the World Championship, his numbers increased:
- In 2018, Bugha averaged 8 viewers
- In 2019, it was 8,380 – especially after his World Championship victory, his popularity skyrocketed
- In 2020, he was able to increase his average viewer count to 12,130
- In 2021, the big Fortnite hype was over: His viewer count dropped to 7,053
- In 2022, he still reached 3,384 viewers
Bugha makes the most of his moment of fame – is the clean guy of Fortnite
How has he been since the victory? Bugha is a very good Fortnite player and a nice young man, but he is not suspected of being incredibly entertaining or having “star potential” like other Twitch streamers from the Fortnite era.
The most successful streamers from this era, like Tfue, Pokimane, Ninja, Nickmercs, TimTheTatman, or Myth are unique in their own way, they entertain viewers and engage them.
These streamers have used Fortnite to build a career on Twitch and remain relevant for years. Some, like TimTheTatman and Myth, have monetized their success with a lucrative YouTube deal. Bugha is not quite in that league.
However, Bugha has managed to make relatively much of his moment of fame at the Fortnite World Championship. In mid-2021, he was even given his own skin in Fortnite by Epic. He entered advertising deals with a clothing brand and a bank.
Bugha remains loyal to Fortnite to this day – but his team gives up
Unlike other well-known Fortnite players like Benjyfishy, Ninja, or Tfue, who have all turned away from Fortnite over the years, Bugha has never done that and still shows Fortnite almost exclusively on his Twitch channel.
However, Bugha also notices that Fortnite is currently losing some steam. At Christmas 2022, his Fortnite team Sentinels parted ways with E-Sports in Fortnite, and the now 19-year-old has to find a new team.
Bugha thanks the team for the “era” and this “memorable chapter of his career” – but is also looking forward to opening a new chapter in 2023.
One can say that Bugha has made the most out of his opportunities and his huge win in 2019:
Compared to other Fortnite players and Twitch streamers like young Clix, he is scandal-free, a “clean guy”.
When Epic Games introduced Bugha and his family in a home story in 2019, Bugha’s and his family’s world seemed so pristine and perfect that many fans were envious of how close-knit the family was and how great everything was.
Fortnite tells of the World Champion – Kids are envious because of his parents
