Fortnite pros Turner “Tfue” Tenney, Dennis “cloakzy” Lepore, and Thomas “72hrs” Mulligan are no longer a competitive trio. They split up this weekend before the Fortnite Champion Series started and tried to find other people to play with.
They were playing together since season X started because Fortnite’s competitive mode Arena moved from Duos to Trios and this season’s competitive series is Trios only. They qualified for the second stage of the FNCS in week two and were still playing week four before their last-minute separation.
Tfue was one of the first to explain his side of the story. It’s because of a sponsorship deal with EA Games to livestream Madden NFL 20 that the three received, which would mean they’d all have to lose week four of the competition to stream the game.
“Madden offered me over $140,000 to play their game, and I declined because I thought we were going to play the tournament this weekend,” Tfue said. “And they took the offer without telling me, last-second. So now I’m out of over $140,000 because I thought we were going to practice, and now I’m here. If they want to pay me the money that I lost, then I’m down. But other than that, I don’t fuck with them.”
Tfue didn’t play Madden, but cloakzy and 72hrs did. Cloakzy replied to Tfue, saying it wasn’t his fault that the player missed the deal and that Tfue was an “idiot” for declining it. Later, 72hrs criticized Tfue for not reaching out to him and cloakzy to talk about the Madden offer and what he wanted to do.
“Why wouldn’t he come to us and be ‘hey, I have this deal, should I do it?’” 72hrs said. He imagined Tfue could’ve accepted it so that the three of them could stream it together since Cloakzy and 72hrs got the offer after Tfue.
“I was even willing to cancel the deal, which is bad for relations with people, in order to go play the tournament if he was upset over it,” 72hrs said.
After week four of the FNCS was over, Tfue said he couldn’t forgive cloakzy and 72hrs because they didn’t apologize. “They just told me I’m a fucking idiot,” he said.
Tfue, cloakzy, and 72hrs missed this week of the FNCS and none of them have announced their new trios yet. It’s unclear if 72hrs and cloakzy will try to find a third player or if they’ll play on separate teams as well.
If the trio gives up on competing in stage two of the FNCS, their spot will likely go to the next trio with the best placement during week two in North America East or in the overall standings after the five weeks of competition of stage one are over.