Steven R. June 24, 2019
The ongoing litigation between Fortnite star Turner “Tfue” Tenney and FaZe Clan is one of the most important stories in esports, but it’s also kind of dumb.
While Tfue and his legal team have taken a by the numbers approach to the situation with carefully handled public statements, members of FaZe have publicly lashed out in ways that are likely hurt the brand’s standing from both public relations and legal perspectives. The organization still continues in making an effort to bash the embattled player. The latest example of this comes in the form of a diss track from 12-year-old FaZe Clan streamer H1ghsky1.
The video was published to his YouTube channel and shared across FaZe’s social media profiles:
Tfue filed a lawsuit against FaZe in May, alleging that the organization preyed upon him at a young age and signed him to an exploitative and illegal contract. In a surprise move, FaZe COO Richard Bengtson agreed with many of those allegations during a lengthy rant on Twitter but lashed out at Tfue by claiming he betrayed the team and was motivated by greed.
Fortnite esports' youngest star got burned
One of the players caught in the middle of this was H1ghsky1. The young Fortnite streamer enjoys a sizable social media following, with FaZe helping to market him as a 13-year-old wunderkind.
This was addressed in Tfue’s court filing, which included claims that FaZe had actually signed him at 11 years old and lied about his age while pressuring H1ghsky1 and his family to do the same. Reports then started circulating that these claims were true and that H1ghsky1 was too young to meet the age requirements of most social media platforms and professional Fortnite competitions. He remains active on YouTube and Instagram but was banned by Twitch shortly after.
The diss track touches upon this and a number of FaZe’s main talking points related to the Tfue’s legal claims.
Though the subject matter is serious, the video itself is definitively less so. It has also done little to warm fans up to FaZe on the matter, with the YouTube video currently boasting over 29,000 dislikes.
