Retired Fortnite Pro Zayt unretires, Bugha kicked out of trios to make room

On January 10th, one of the best Fortnite pros in the world, Zayt, announced his sudden and unexpected retirement. It came following the reveal that the Fortnite competitive scene would have its competitive prize support cut more than ever before.

I am at a point where I would regret not competing and wasting my gift for the game. With that said, yes I am coming back, sorry for everyone that I affected negatively. 2/2

— NRG Zayt (@zayt) January 30, 2021

Zayt mentioned that despite being one of the best Fortnite players in the world he was unable to earn enough money to pay his rent, making the decrease in prize support a big red flag for a player of his calibre. Since his retirement, Epic announced a $20 million prize pool for the Fortnite Champion Series, a significant increase from the previous year, which likely prompted Zayt to return.

Zayt returns to competitive Fortnite, unfortunately pushing Bugha out of his trios team

well yeah we're playing with zayt for the rest of FNCS, bugha is one of the best players i have ever played with and is easily one of my favorite teammates and i never in a thousand years thought zayt was gonna come back

— Liquid Stretch (@Stretch) January 30, 2021

Zayt’s return to competitive Fortnite was apparently as unexpected as his initial retirement - something mentioned by the team that had originally replaced Zayt with another famous Fortnite legend, Bugha. Although unfortunate, it’s likely this return will have a sort of trickle-down effect.

Bugha has the skill and name recognition needed to find another team, and it’s likely he’ll have another trio in a matter of days. Naturally, Bugha’s inclusion on whichever Fortnite team he joins will likely result in pushing another player out, or at least sidelining them for the event.

However, while it’s not the best situation, it’s hard to criticize Zayt too much for his actions here. He is certainly skilled at Fortnite, and Epic seemingly addressed the problem behind his retirement by increasing the Fortnite Champion Series prize pool. Failing to compete in this tournament where he has a considerable chance at winning some of that prize pool would be irresponsible, especially if he really is struggling to pay rent as he implies.

This whole problem could have been avoided had Fortnite communicated more clearly with its competitive scene

This is admittedly a stretch, and Epic by no means bears full responsibility for this situation. But, it would be unfair to completely absolve Epic for its consistent failure to communicate with their competitive community. Epic has had a history of treating the competitive Fortnite community as an exploitable and marketable group while simultaneously failing to help that community grow.

The lack of involvement with the Fortnite competitive community wouldn’t be so bad if they were fully hands off. However, the fact that Epic uses their competitive community to generate hype for their game shows how one-sided their relationship is.

Fortunately, Epic seems to be beginning to understand how important their competitive community is. Hopefully, Epic continues to support its competitive players.

Epic certainly has the resources necessary to turn competitive Fortnite into a much bigger event, in the same way that the fighting game community was able to turn their conglomeration of communities into a global phenomenon with the EVO tournament series.