Why Ninja Is Concerned For The Future Of Fortnite

"Fortnite" removed building at the start of Chapter 3 – Season 2 as part of its ongoing story. Doctor Slone, a recurring villain in the game, deactivated building devices as part of the Imagined Order's invasion of Fortnite Island. Little did Epic Games realize that this fun experiment would turn into a fan-favorite mode — and possible competitive play problem. "Zero Build" has since become a permanent casual mode in the game. Many content creators, including Twitch star Tyler "Ninja" Blevins, excitedly returned to the game after the addition.

Ninja essentially quit "Fortnite" over stream sniping last year, pivoting to "Valorant" and "League of Legends" instead. However, he's recently blended back into the community for the hit battle royale responsible for his rise to fame. Now, however, he's explaining his concerns about how Epic might take Zero Build even further by extending it to competitive mode. 

Right now, the sole "Fortnite" competitive playlist is still build-only. Ninja predicts that a separate Zero Build competitive playlist could threaten the existing one because it would split players between the two. In other words, he doesn't think "Fortnite" has a big enough playerbase to have a healthy esports league for both, even if Zero Build attracted new players to the game. Epic hasn't announced any concrete plans to make Zero Build a competitive mode, but Ninja explained how it could hurt the player base if it did.

Ninja brought up the possibility of Zero Build negatively impacting the competitive scene during a recent stream (per Daily Clips Central). "I don't know if they want to split up their community that much where there is ... a Zero Build and a build, solos, duos, trios, and squads. And now there is a Zero Build and build solos, duos, trios, arena, right?" Ninja said. "I don't think they want to do that. I wouldn't do that if I were them... There literally might not be enough players in the game to split up the playlists that much."

For better or worse, building set "Fortnite" apart from its competitors. Building, which relies on players collecting wood, brick, and metal with a pickaxe at the beginning of matches, allows players to "build" structures like walls and even entire towers from materials in the game. Competitive "Fortnite" matches can often look like "Tetris," with pros strategically toppling each other's towers and building their own multi-story mansions. Understandably, this pushed away those who preferred traditional FPS and tactical gameplay. Now, players like Ninja fear that embracing more traditional battle royale conventions in competitive settings might be the wrong move.