The Game Ninja Just Said He'll Never Play Again

It feels almost like blasphemy to talk about Ninja without mentioning the game Fortnite. Epic's shooter is what helped put the streamer on the map, and both Ninja and Fortnite have had a sort of symbiotic relationship these past few years. With fame sometimes comes pain, though, as Ninja found out recently while taking part in some Fortnite battle royale action. A lot of players know who he is, which means those who end up in a game with him target him almost immediately. This "stream sniping" has Ninja ready to quit Fortnite for good.

In clips from a recent Ninja Fortnite session, you can see what got the streamer so fired up. In one match, he seemed to land in an area alone, only for an opponent to quickly track him down and kill him. After that, a similar scenario played out in a new match, and Ninja was hunted down and eliminated by the same player who'd killed him in the previous contest. According to Dexerto, Ninja was actually killed by this same exact person in four different matches. Ninja seemed to believe this player was watching his stream in order to figure out where he was located on the map — a.k.a. "stream sniping."

Ninja went off.

"It's the same kids, bro," he said. "Get out of my game. Get away from me, man." Ninja added, "This game is so f—ing stupid, bro. Like, the community, these little f—ing kids, it's just so dumb."

Ninja went on to call the stream snipers "clout-chasing losers" and accused them of "harming the game." He also threatened to stop playing and streaming the game entirely, an act some may find difficult to imagine given Ninja's history with Fortnite. On one hand, Ninja's frustration seems understandable. It's likely tough to play competitively when an opponent has information on where you are and what you're doing. On the other hand, though, the issue is a difficult one to address. How would Epic Games prevent Fortnite players from also watching Ninja's stream? How interesting would a Ninja stream be without any gameplay, if he decided to go that route?

It's not clear at this point whether Ninja is actually going to quit Fortnite or not. Judging by his Twitter feed, Ninja has been putting a lot more time into League of Legends lately, so maybe he's looking for a new game to play. Regardless, this situation could serve as a wake-up call for Epic Games to try and figure out how to deal with stream snipers. If Ninja ends up leaving Fortnite, the game will have some awfully big Adidas shoes to fill.