Reckful | |||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Born | Byron Daniel Bernstein May 8, 1989 | ||||||||||||
| Died | July 2, 2020 (aged 31) Austin, Texas, U.S. | ||||||||||||
| Cause of death | Suicide | ||||||||||||
| Nationality | Israeli-American | ||||||||||||
| Years active | 2009–2020 | ||||||||||||
| Esports career | |||||||||||||
| Career information | |||||||||||||
| Games | World of Warcraft Asheron's Call Hearthstone | ||||||||||||
| Team history | |||||||||||||
| 2009–2011 | compLexity Gaming[1] | ||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||
Byron Daniel Bernstein (May 8, 1989 – July 2, 2020), better known by his online alias Reckful, was an American Twitch streamer and professional esports player. Bernstein was best known in the gaming community for his achievements in World of Warcraft and Asheron's Call.[2][3][4][5]
Byron Daniel Bernstein was born into a Jewish family. He had two older brothers named Guy and Gary; Guy, the oldest, committed suicide when Byron was 6.[6][7][8][better source needed] Bernstein said this event had a profound effect on his life and his subsequent struggles with depression.[9]
Bernstein committed suicide on July 2, 2020 at the age of 31.
Reckful was a talented World of Warcraft player, best known for his impressive mechanical rogue gameplay and innovative playstyle. His popularity in the game began when he finished in the top 0.1% of the game, without the use of what were considered essential gameplay mechanics at the time. He finished in the top 0.1% of the playerbase multiple competitive seasons in a row and was the first player to reach 3000 rating. He competed in a handful of tournaments, and won Major League Gaming's World of Warcraft tournament in 2010.[10]
In 2011, Bernstein released the gaming movie Reckful 3. It reached one million views within a week (as of January 2021, the video had over six million views).[11] He later won the WarcraftMovies top skilled contest, in which players cast their vote for player of the year.[12] In 2012, he became a developer, operations manager, and concept designer at Feenix, a gaming mouse company.[13] He created his YouTube channel in October 2012 and followed in November with his first video, "Reckful 5 stack Taste for Blood".
In 2017, Bernstein was ranked fourth in The Gazette Review's list of top ten richest streamers. He claimed to have a net worth of $1.5 million and was receiving up to 50,000 viewers per stream.[14][15]
Bernstein played poker and entered the 2016 Unibet Open London main event, but was knocked out early.[16] In November 2017, Bernstein played in a charity poker event sponsored by PokerGO.[17] The event was won by itsHafu.[18]
In May 2018, Bernstein began releasing a podcast called Tea Time with Byron, which features long-form interviews with notable guests in the gaming and streaming communities such as Pokimane and Hikaru Nakamura. A total of 6 episodes were released, the last one on March 31, 2020.[19][20]
Before his death, Bernstein was in the process of creating an MMO called Everland.[21]
In August 2020, Blizzard and World of Warcraft paid tribute to Bernstein with an in-game trainer, named after his online alias Reckful. The character is placed inside the Cathedral of Light, an in-game landmark where the community gathered to pay Bernstein a tribute following the news of his death.[22]
Presented content of the Wikipedia article was extracted in 2021-06-13 based on https://en.wikipedia.org/?curid=41324590