Fortnite
The new Fortnite hype is fueling the dormant Twitch careers of 2 old enemies
In 2018, online shooter Fortnite was so hyped that Tyler “Ninja” Blevins and Turner “Tfue” Tenney rose to fame on Twitch. Both of them couldn’t stand each other back then and became the two biggest streamers on the gaming platform. But after 2018 her career fell asleep – that’s changing now with the resurgence of Fortnite on Twitch.
How big are the two by followers? Tfue and Ninja are the two US streamers with the largest channels on Twitch – by a wide margin:
- Ninja has 17.49 million followers — that’s still 5 million more followers in 2022 than second-place AuronPlay, a Spanish-speaking streamer. However, Ninja has only ranked 344th among the average viewers over the past six months.
- Tfue has 10.9 million followers – with xQc (10.16) and shroud (10 million) chasing it, but Tfue still has a comfortable lead over No. 3 for English language streamers. Average viewership has ranked Tfue 743 over the last 180 days.
The Flamer who became good and his great rival
How did they get so big? Both owe their enormous success mainly to Fortnite:
Ninja was one of the best players at the beginning of the Fortnite euphoria in late 2017, regularly dominating “random lobbies”: He blasted rows of unsuspecting beginners and looked like a shooter god.
With clever partnerships with up-and-coming streamers like TimTheTatman or DrLupo, his channel continued to grow. The feared constant flamer even paid attention to his image: Because of the children, he gave up swearing.
He even burst into the mainstream in 2018, getting invited to talk shows and huge on Twitch. During that time he also made a lot of money.
Tfue came to Fortnite later but was even better than Ninja as a player. He was the only major content creator to ever qualify for the Fortnite World Cup. Despite all his ambitions, Ninja had failed again and again and almost got mad about it.
Tfue was also significantly younger, constantly cursing, fluffing and fussing, getting fans who perceived Ninja as “too soft”. Tfue also always sought conflict with Ninja, believing that Ninja didn’t like him and somehow made him his enemy.
Twitch streamer Tfue etches: “Ninja is a pussy” – Fortnite rivals in dispute
Ninja gets rich and Tfue puts on muscles
So the career of the two went after Fortnite? Both of their careers have flattened out a bit: Ninja embarked on a very lucrative foray into the Mixer platform. Since that was over, he’s been streaming on Twitch again, but not with the same ambition as before – and the success isn’t as great for a long time.
Ninja played games like Apex Legends, LoL or the ancient Final Fantasy XI, made strange deals with Raid: Shadow Legends or published their own “How to become super” stream course.
From 2021 to 2022 alone, Ninja lost about 29% of its viewers. He is long gone from the former weddings – almost 90% are missing.
Tfue has apparently worked mainly on his upper body in recent years and enjoyed life.
Things weren’t going so well on Twitch anymore: in the last 365 alone, he lost almost 40% of average viewers. Tfue played popular and modern shooters like Apex Legend or CoD Warzone, but hasn’t had the success it used to for a long time.
Tfue has always been known for his great aiming:
No-build Fortnite boosts viewership by 81%
What’s different now? With the start of the new season in Fortnite, Epic has done away with “building”. This has now taken Fortnite to new heights.
Both Ninja and Tfue are now back to playing “their old favorite game”:
- Tufe played 21 hours of Fortnite in 7 days and again had an average of 19,600 viewers. Overall, he improved his average viewership by 63% over time.
- Ninja demolished 40 hours of Fortnite in 7 days and had an average of 15,653 viewers. At least that’s an increase. He hadn’t streamed at all the week before, but compared to the 2 weeks before, that was a 49% increase.
- Fortnite itself has also improved a lot in the last 7 days. Average viewership increased by 81%.
Ninja to 180 in Fortnite:
The most successful streamer overall is xQc. He had risen when Ninja left the platform. Ninja himself comes in 3rd place in terms of total hours watched, Tfue is in 7th place.
Maybe the two will fight for the top spots again soon and quite by accident flame each other a bit. Just like in the old days.
