It's hard to find a gamer who had a bigger year than Kyle "Bugha" Giersdorf.
On Tuesday, Forbes recognized him, naming the 16-year-old inaugural Fortnite World Cup champion to its 2020 30 under 30 list for the gaming world.
Among the other gamers on the list were 21-year-old Dominique "SonicFox" McLean, 28-year-old Rumay "Hafu" Wang, 24-year-old Nick "Nick Eh 30" Amyoony and Soleil "Ewok" Wheeler -- who is only 14 years old.
The 30 Under 30 series, in the words of Forbes, recognizes "600 revolutionaries in 20 industries changing the course -- and the face -- of business and society."
Bugha emerged from a field of 40 million and took down 99 other players at Arthur Ashe Stadium in Queens, New York, in July to become Fortnite's first World Cup solo champion. With it, Bugha took home $3 million and became an instant star, sitting down with the likes of Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show. Signed with Sentinels, Bugha has more than 1.2 million Twitch followers.
SonicFox is one of the most accomplished fighting gaming community esports players, winning five championships at Evo and winning Best Esports Player at the 2018 Game Awards. SonicFox also identifies as queer, nonbinary and part of the furry community, with their blue fox head a part of the player's persona. The Team Echo Fox star also donated $10,000 to help pay for an opponent's father's cancer treatment.
Hafu has made a name for herself for seven years as a full-time streamer in games like Hearthstone and League of Legends and has built her Twitch following to close to 800,000. This year she was recognized as the No. 1 Teamfight Tactics player and then signed with G2 Esports.
Nick Eh 30 has parlayed his image as a streamer of family-friendly content into a deal in which Twitch signed him away from YouTube, where he was one of the platform's biggest streamers with more than 4.6 million subscribers at the time. He has also partnered with brands including Axe, Amazon Studios and Electronic Arts.
Born deaf, Ewok has a story as fascinating as her gameplay. The teen has amassed nearly 300,000 Twitch followers as some of the biggest names in Fortnite have hosted her channel. The popularity has helped make her a bit of an icon among deaf and hard-of-hearing gamers around the world, and she upped her profile by competing this summer in the Fortnite Celebrity Pro-Am in Los Angeles.
Forbes 2020 30 Under 30: Games list:
Kezia Adamo, 27 (Programmer, StudioMDHR)
Nick "Nick Eh 30" Amyoony, 24 (Professional gamer, Nick Eh 30)
Brent Batas, 29; Julian Gari, 28 (Cofounders, AutoAttack Games)
Joseph Bentley, 27 (Head of Beyond Entertainment, Logitech)
Justin Britch, 27 (Head of development, Obsidian Entertainment)
Maxx Burman, 29 (Cofounder, KitBash3d)
Bonnie Burton, 28 (Producer, Bungie)
Rebecca Ford, 29 (Live operations and community director, Digital Extremes)
Lauren Gaba Flanagan, 29 (Cofounder, Theorycraft)
Kyle "Bugha" Giersdorf, 16 (Professional gamer, Sentinels)
Renee Gittins, 29 (Executive director, IGDA)
Richard Henkel, 28 (Product lead, Riot Games)
Kyle Holdwick, 29 (Senior gameplay engineer, thatgamecompany)
Mary Kenney, 28 (Writer, Insomniac Games)
Nicole LaPointe Jameson, 25 (CEO, Evil Geniuses)
Keizac Lee, 25 (Partner, Kowloon Nights)
Dominique "SonicFox" McLean, 21 (Professional gamer, Echo Fox)
Shayna Moon, 28 (Associate producer, Santa Monica Studio)
Spencer Perreault, 29 (Principal software engineer, Microsoft)
Stephen Ellis, 28; David Steinberg, 27 (Cofounders, Pipeline)
Jasmine Roberts, 27 (Creative technologist, Google Creative Lab)
Sam Rosenthal, 28 (Founder, The Game Band)
Ketaki Shriram, 28 (Cofounder, Krikey)
Justin Stander, 26 (Founder, Askiisoft)
James Sun, 24 (Senior product manager, Twitch)
Hanako Tjia, 27 (Agent, UTA)
Rumay "Hafu" Wang, 28 (Professional gamer, G2 Esports)
Soleil "Ewok" Wheeler, 14 (Professional gamer, Faze Clan)
Carrie Witt, 29 (Art Director, Owlchemy Labs)
Zhenghua Yang, 29 (Founder, Serenity Forge)
-- Field Level Media