Dutch Fortnite gamer wins a cool $1m at world championships

Dave Jong, who goes by the name of Rojo, has come second in the first ever Fortnite World Championship in New York at the weekend, bagging a million dollar slice of the unprecedented $30m prize money – despite only taking up the game a year ago.

The 21-year-old and his British partner Jaden ‘Wolfiez’ Ashman left 48 other teams in the duo competition standing, and only had to concede victory to Norwegian Emil ‘Nyhrox’ Bergquist Pedersen and Thomas ‘Aqua’ Arnould from Austria who went home with $3m each.

‘This is super cool,’ Jong told NOS. ‘We trained really hard so I did expect to end up in the top 10. But to get to second place was a bit of a surprise.’

Jong said he didn’t know what he was going to do with the money. ‘I’ll probably invest it. I don’t really need a house. I’m fine living with my mum,’ he told the broadcaster.

In Fortnite players are dumped on a virtual island where they have to find weapons, build structures and eliminate each other until one player comes out on top.

It is currently one of the most popular online games with tens of millions of active players worldwide.