In this past year, the world’s largest epidemic has not been any type of disease.

It has been a video game.

Released in 2017 by Epic Games, Fortnite has taken the world by storm. For a while in the duration of 2017 and 2018, the game meant everything to many, many people.

At Elder High School, the Fortnite epidemic hit pretty hard. Students found ways to get the beloved game onto their computers, and the school was in a Fortnite frenzy.

One of the best Fortnite players at Elder was once junior Jack Collins. Collins said, “I’d play 2-3 times a week for usually about two hours each time I played.” As of late, Collins hasn’t been as much as a player as before, telling me he plays it every once in a while, and his current game of choice is Madden.

Nowadays, Fortnite noobs have the opportunity to really put their gaming abilities to the test. Epic Games has opened tournaments for players to come and showcase their abilities. Not just for fun, though, but for a payout for the best. A large payout.

Recently, the company has announced a tournament to be held later this fall, with a payout of a whopping $10 million.

Now, I’m not much of a Fortnite player, but I feel like I missed out. People are getting bank off of a video game! Winning one of these tournaments would be like winning the lottery.

Sure, being a freak at Fortnite is something to be proud of, depending on who you ask. Some people consider it to be a waste of time to spend hours and days playing the game. But hey, these guys are earnin’ and burnin’ their way to becoming millionaires through Fortnite.

Rob Engelhardt is appalled by this fact. “I think it’s flat out stupid that people can win that much money from a video game,” Engelhardt says. He followed by saying, “However, that’s coming from a kid that sucks at Fortnite.” Looks like Rob talks the talk, but can’t walk the walk.

Do these men and women who have great hand-eye talents deserve to be paid by the thousands for their dominance in Fortnite? Possibly the most well know Fortnite star, Tyler Belvin, better known as Ninja, revealed that on average, he earns about $500,000 per month by just playing the game and streaming it.

Forbes magazine asked Ninja if he encourages young kids following in his footsteps and trying to become the next great Fortnite streamer. Ninja responded by saying, “It is very difficult to ‘make it’ as a top broadcaster or YouTuber. I encourage every person to follow their dreams and believe that they can do anything, but the harsh reality is…reality.” He sounds not too confident in this response.

The dream is still real though, and is not only real to just kids, but parents. Parents have officially gone awol, in my opinion, by hiring people to coach their children in Fortnite.

Don’t parents want their kids to go outside and be active, and to not be a hermit chilling in their basement playing video games? C’mon guys. What are we doing? Isn’t laziness a huge problem for youth nowadays?

Listen, I think this has gone entirely too far. Sure, the game can be fun and all, but I think getting paid thousands of dollars for playing a video game is absurd. These people are making more money than people with “real” jobs.

I don’t blame them for sticking with it, I mean they’re making boatloads of money. If I were them, I’d be doing exactly the same thing. But I’m not them, and I think we need to take a chill pill on paying gamers this much money. It’s getting out of hand.