Fortnite: Thwifo, Kayuun and Snood Leave Ghost Gaming

Ghost Gaming has lost three members from its competitive Fortnite roster.

Several Ghost Gaming Fortnite members have left the organization over the last few days. The only three confirmed players that have moved on thus far are Justin “Kayuun” Ha, Christian “Snood” Hastle and Zander “Thwifo” Kim. Although Ghost Gaming has not officially addressed these departures, each player has confirmed the news. No specific reasons have come to light as to why these players left the organization. We can theorize that, based on their join dates, all three players’ contracts expired simultaneously.

Contents

1 Snood Leaves
2 Thwifo Leaves
3 Kayuun Leaves
4 Organizational Presence in Esports

Snood Leaves

Going to miss you man thank you for everything you’ve done

— Robbie Meade (@Skoal_GG) January 19, 2020

Snood Tweeted out his departure from Ghost Gaming later in the evening on January 18th. He joined Ghost Gaming along with Thwifo, Kayuun, Sean, Kamo and Issa back in Septemeber of 2018. Snood’s career highlights with Ghost Gaming include two top-ten finishes in the 2018 Fall Skirmish, tenth at WSOE 3 and some decent one-off Fortnite Champion Series showings. With Snood now a free agent, he is seeking opportunities from other organizations involved in Fortnite. Ghost Gaming’s Head of Scouting, Robbie “Skoal” Meade, reached out to Snood in response to his Twitter announcement to thank him for his contributions to the organization. Snood currently has over 30K YouTube subscribers, 85.2K Twitter followers and nearly 60K Twitch followers. Organizations that are lacking talent may look to bring in Snood for 2020.

Thwifo Leaves

parted ways with ghost gaming

now a free agent ✌️

— NRG thwifo (@thwifo) January 19, 2020

Quite possibly the most shocking departure of the bunch is that of Thwifo. He joined way back in September of 2018 and spent the vast majority of his professional Fortnite career. Thwifo’s compiled a solid track record, including a tenth place finish at WSOE 3, second place at Secret Skirmish, third place in the NA East Gauntlet, third place in the NA West Blackheart Cup. Just last month, Thwifo took third place on day three of the Winter Royale alongside former Team SoloMid member, Cloud. An unfortunate black mark in Thwifo’s illustrious Fortnite history was his failure to qualify for the Fortnite World Cup. Nonetheless, Thwifo is still one of the best players in North America and may not be a free agent for very long.

Kayuun Leaves

Although unconfirmed by Kayuun, he no longer has any Ghost branding on his Twitter profile and liked the previously shown Tweets by Snood and Thwifo. We can safely surmise that Kayuun is also no longer part of the popular Fortnite organization. The 21-year-old NA West player has been competing in Fortnite for quite some time. Kayuun’s best placements came about in 2018 and 2019. He did not qualify for the Fortnite World Cup, but he came close in both duos and solos. With over 100K subscribers on YouTube, organizations can look to Kayunn as both a content creator and a competitive player.

Organizational Presence in Esports

Some of the most significant esports organizations have at one point participated in Fortnite. For the better part of three years, Fortnite has dominated Twitch and YouTube viewership. Since 2020 kicked off, we’ve seen Team SoloMid, and now Ghost Gaming lose players in some way, shape or form. Whatever the case may be, it’s worth questioning whether the Fortnite buzz is starting to dissipate slowly. We are nearly one month into the new year and have yet to hear plans for a second Fortnite World Cup or another Fortnite Champion Series event. Rumors have been swirling that a trios event is coming soon, but the Fortnite Competitive Twitter account has yet to confirm these supposed plans. A competitive Fortnite caster by the name of Arten “Ballatw” Esa posted a Twitter thread of his own with his theories about why organizations are dropping and not resigning players:

Jesus guys, no, this isn't the only factor, no Ghost did not drop people BECAUSE of that and every situation is obviously unique. It's just one of many instances of orgs dropping and players not resigning that has occured after official broadcasts stopped.

— Ballatw (@Ballatw) January 20, 2020

Since the Season X Finals, Epic Games has not broadcasted a single competitive Fortnite event. It, unfortunately, takes the shine off of these high-profile organizations. Epic Games has never really put esports franchises in a position to succeed. Most of their tournaments and YouTube videos focus primarily on the players. It’s possible that Ghost Gaming is starting to realize that Fortnite may never reach the heights of Overwatch and League of Legends.