16-year-old Kyle Giersdorf received $3 million by winning the top prize in a tournament in New York for Fortnite, a popular online video game.
The teen from Pennsylvania was one of the 100 players competing for $30 million in total prize money. As the popularity of the game increased, Fortnite has attracted large investments and powered the online professional sport.
Giersdorf, who was playing under the name Bugha, won the solo finals portion by gaining 59 points, 26 more points than the top 2 player, according to the Fortnite World Cup Leaderboard.
In an interview at Arthur Ashe Stadium in New York, Giersdof said: “Words can’t even explain it. I’m just so happy.
“Everything I’ve done, the grind, it’s all paid off. It’s just insane.”
It was in 2017 when Fortnite was released and its popularity helped Epic Games reach a $15-billion-valuation in 2018.
The popular game already competes with other games like Tencent Holdings Ltd’ PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds and Electronic Arts Inc’s Apex Legends.
A 15-year-old boy from Essex also walked away with more than $1 million after he and his partner won the duos section.
Jaden said to the BBC: “Me and my mum, we clash quite a lot. Like, she didn’t understand how it worked, so she thought that I was spending eight hours a day in my room just wasting my time.
“So now that I’ve proved to her that I can do stuff, I’m really happy.”
His mother, Lisa Dallman, said: “If I’m honest with you I’ve been quite against him gaming. I’ve been more pushing him to his schoolwork.
“I’ve actually thrown an XBox out, snapped a headset, we’ve had a nightmare.
“And then leading up to the games, getting his visa, we had problems with that so we had a week of a nightmare.
“Then the dog ate his birth certificate, so – and this is not a joke – this actually really did happen.
“And then my work messed up my wages, so three things went wrong before we started heading here so I knew we were on an even keel and everything was going to go right.”
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