Posted in: Games, Video Games | Tagged: epic games, eSports, Fortnite

A 13-Year-Old Gets an Esports Contract to Play Fortnite

Most kids and teenagers only dream of having a career in esports, but most of the youngest players to ever professionally get on a team are usually around 17-18 years old, simply for the fact of travel and legalities. That game just changed with the latest signing for a Fortnite pro team. Team Secret, who you may know best from Dota 2 competitions, has signed on a 13-year-old kid to play on their four-squad team, who was revealed to be Kyle "Mongraal" Jackson from the U.K. The news broke via ESPN, who spoke with the team's CEO, John Yao. Here are a couple quotes from him from the piece.

"When a game gets popular enough, generally everybody tries to get into esports, because they want to legitimize the game's competitive nature," Yao said. "And Fortnite is competitive, and I think there's a lot of room for it to be established on the scene."

I actually had no idea he was 13 until the team told me," Yao said. "Because when we looked at some of the videos and we looked at their game play, it was not apparent. What immediately stood out to me was how mature he was, and he sounded just like one of the other guys."

Since there really hasn't been an official launch of a Fortnite competitive league yet, they're essentially paying the kid to play Fortnite and become awesome at it long before he'll ever see competition beyond online battle royale fights. But now anyone in their tweens who says they want to lay games for a living has some ammo with their parents to try and pursue that dream. Well, until they turn 18 and graduate high school, then that's a whole new discussion.

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