Fortnite Finalist Tells Epic Executive to Kill Himself, and it Goes Badly

If you want to be an esports athlete, you generally can’t just be really good at the game in question: oftentimes you need a team, a sponsor, and you need to hold yourself to a certain code of conduct. Sometimes that code of conduct can be a bit ambiguous, like when Blitzchung decided to take a stand for something important and valuable and Blizzard punished him because they’re spineless cowards. Most of the time, though, it’s pretty straightforward: don’t cheat, don’t gamble, and for the love of god, don’t tell the game’s executives to kill themselves on Twitter.

This is something that former player Wrigley learned the hard way when he did exactly that on Saturday, during the first day of the Fortnite Champion Series grand finals for the NA East region, which has a prize pool of 700k and takes weeks of hard work to reach. The tweet was the clearly miscalculated result of him getting sniped early in the competition.

Unsurprisingly, he found himself quickly and efficiently kicked out of the tournament following the tweet, but there is a complication that makes this a bit messier than a simple case of schadenfreude: for you see, Wrigley was teamed up with two other players, Dictate and Userz, who were also kicked out by proxy, in spite of the fact they didn’t do anything wrong. This also disqualifies them from the money they had already earned, which was about 600 bucks each.

The community has appeared to rally behind Dictate and Userz, but it seems unlikely Epic Games will reconsider their position. For what it’s worth, Wrigley apparently promised to compensate his teammates, and some people have donated some money their way as well, as a form of sympathy compensation.

This is the unfortunate and semi-inevitable result of having a pro series dominated largely by children. Hopefully, everyone involved learned a lesson — about picking your words, and your teammates, carefully.