Fortnite star Clix launches fund to help aspiring pros afford gaming PCs

Fortnite star Cody "Clix" Conrod has launched a fund to help aspiring professional gamers afford the expensive equipment needed to compete.

The 21-year-old player and streamer, who has over 8 million Twitch followers, formalized his annual holiday giveaway into the Dr3amin Access Fund through his new holding company, Full Box Inc., which launched on Thursday.

Conrod said he hopes to lift the financial burden of buying a computer so more parents will let their children test the professional limits of their hobby.

"If I never had that PC, if I never had access to that computer, this career, this setup that you see, would not be a thing," Conrod said, speaking from his Dallas bedroom where he streams.

The equipment needed to compete at higher levels is becoming pricier, according to Joost van Dreunen, a games industry researcher and adjunct assistant professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business.

"Anybody who is starting up early in their career, anybody who is building their first PC, is having an increasingly difficult time finding hardware and components for it," he said.

Conrod recommends a setup that can handle at least 120 frames per second for a GPU-intensive game like Fortnite.

He understands the financial squeeze firsthand, having started playing at age five on a computer his parents could afford.

When Fortnite grew popular, Conrod said he had to make do with a "worst of the worst" computer running 30 frames per second.

After begging his parents for a roughly $1,600 computer, his father wrote a contract requiring the teenager to pay him back by working for his plumbing company over the summer.

Conrod ultimately needed just two weeks' worth of Fortnite earnings to honor the deal.

By age 14, he had made nearly $200,000 through the Fortnite World Cup and felt he could not balance classes with his career.

Waking up for middle school at 6 a.m. to then compete in tournaments at 6 p.m. left him exhausted.

"You can't be tired when you're playing," he explained, adding that reaction times have to be "crisp."

After some hesitation, his parents agreed to let him drop out of eighth grade to go all-in on competitive gaming.

Esports is still a place where it is "very hard to make a living," according to van Dreunen.

The real money is clustered at the top, he said, and there is no "healthy" talent ecosystem.

Many people still do not view competitive gaming as a legitimate career, both he and Conrod emphasized.

Conrod added that aspiring players "also have to get good grades if they're in school."

He noted that he made the "still delusional but a little less delusional" move to drop out only when he had won "a good amount of money."

Full Box Inc. is inspired by MrBeast’s sprawling media empire and encompasses Clix’s clothing brand, clipping agency and game studio, among other endeavors.

He is still figuring out the funding model for the Dr3amin Access Fund.

Some proceeds from his clothing brand will support the initiative, and other brands will have the opportunity to donate during his end-of-year giveaway, Clixmas.

He will also give some personally; last year he said he contributed about $100,000 as Clixmas gave away five custom PCs daily throughout December.

Conrod got proof of concept this past weekend when his team took fourth place and $120,000 among 50 duos at the Fortnite Global Championship in Belgium.

Among his competitors was a gamer known online as Joshreyli, whom Conrod met two years ago during the first Clixmas.

Conrod had challenged his audience to eliminate him in a one-on-one match in exchange for a computer.

Josh won, got the PC and has since earned six figures as a pro, according to Conrod.

"It’s like a full-circle moment of what helps me want to do more stuff like this," Conrod said. "Those stories fire me up."