FaZe Clan is one of the most popular gaming brands right now, and inarguably their most important aspect is their content creation. So it’s fitting that one of their biggest draws, in Turner “Tfue” Tenney, is going to be setting is focus solely on streaming.
This could be partially due to Tfue's most recent medical issues. However, his stream has grown astronomically in the last 12 months and likely provides far more security and stability for the young internet celebrity.
On his most recent stream, while he was in the middle of playing in his Fornite World Cup qualifier matches, the face of Faze Clan responded to a comment about him quitting competitive Fortnite.
“Are you going to quit Fortnite after the World Cup?" reads Tfue from his chat. "Competitive, yeah,” he replied, as he was heading into the game lobby. “This is my last competitive s***, is the World Cup,” he added.
The Fortnite World Cup is the first gigantic-sized Fortnite tournament built by Epic Games themselves. Currently, it’s in the Open Qualifiers stage, where any player has the chance to make history and earn a spot in the huge tournament come the end of July.
Tfue also noted that he doesn’t even believe he should be trying to qualify. Presumably, Tfue thinks that taking a slot in the tournament from someone who wants to be there is a feelsbadman move. “I shouldn’t even be playing this s***,” he said to his chat. “I don’t need the money anyway, I’m just playing it for fun,” using his not-so-humble brag as punctuation on the statement.
Over his short career thus far, Tfue has earned almost $500,000 in prize money. With four Major wins and one Minor gold medal, Tfue has seen a lot of success in both Duos competition with fellow FaZe Clan member Cloak and in Solo competition.
Tfue is a very good Fortnite player, and his very on-brand FaZe Clan attitude has brought a whole new audience to Twitch that previously lived on VOD platforms like YouTube. On average, over the past year, Tfue has roughly 38,000 viewers on his channel during streams. He’s gained almost 5.5 million followers, and every time he goes live those numbers are trending upwards.
Just today, his sub-8-hour stream averaged 96,000 viewers and peaked at 155,000. Overall on Twitch, he’s ranked 2nd under only Ninja for fastest growing channels and is 4th on the most-watched list behind Ninja, Riot Games, and Shroud.
With all of this said, it makes total sense that the off-beat alternative to Ninja would want to retire from professional competition and put more time into his streams.
“I’d rather stream and do bad, than not stream, ya know?” concluded Tfue. Much like the recently retired Overwatch League player Dafran, some folks are far more successful in their streaming careers than in their LAN careers. There are also folks that are just the type of people that like streaming over the public competitive scene.
We will have more information on the Fortnite World Cup as the qualifiers unfold and we grow closer to the actual event in New York City.
For now, what do you think about notable Esports players retiring in order to stream more?
