Team Liquid’s Poach explains surprise decision to retire from Fortnite

Team Liquid’s Jake ‘Poach‘ Brumleve has revealed that he plans to step back from competing in Fortnite Battle Royale and instead focus on streaming, after questioning the basic ‘competitiveness’ of the game.

As one of the game’s best known competitive players, Poach is set to miss out on the upcoming World Cup, after failing to qualify despite changing up his duo partners.

But, it looks like the World Cup qualifiers may be his last competitive action, as the 20-year-old has revealed that he aims to focus more on his Twitch streaming career, than on winning tournaments.

Speaking to his viewers on June 26, Poach explained: “I’m going to focus more on streaming, and going that direction with my career within Fortnite.”

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Surprisingly – or perhaps not so, depending who you ask – Poach highlighted the lack of competitiveness for his sudden retirement. He continued: “I don’t really enjoy playing Fortnite competitively, because I don’t feel the game is very competitive.”

Brumleve also says that his general enjoyment of the game, competitive or otherwise, has began to wane as time has gone on, although does say recent updates have improved things.

Poach hints that he may move into a more ‘variety’ style of streaming, where he plays more than just what he’s known for. Although, a majority of his fans only know him for one thing and breaking that mould can be difficult.

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Fellow Fortnite competitor Turner ‘Tfue’ Tenney has already stepped away from competitive play, and it appears that more and more are following suit, seeing the lucrative opportunities of streaming as a preferred alternative to Epic Games’ undeniably shaky start to life for Fortnite esports.

While he won’t be at the World Cup finals in New York when it kicks off in July, Poach mocked the format of the event on Twitter, after it was revealed that only six matches would be played, to decide who wins the $3m first place prize.

Many top professional players in various esports have made the transition successfully of course, most notably Michael ‘shroud’ Grzesiek, a former CS:GO pro, and even top streamer Tyler ‘Ninja’ Blevins started out as a competitive Halo player, before becoming the streaming phenomenon he is today.