Reckful gained his popularity playing various games such as “World of Warcraft” and “Acheron’s Call”, and he’s now a full time streamer on Twitch, having almost 800,000 followers on his channel. Let’s have a closer look on Reckful, both as a gamer and as a person.
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Early years, family, education
Byron Daniel “Reckful” Bernstein was born on 8 May 1989, in Los Angeles, California USA. When a child, he lived with his parents and his elder brother, with whom he has always been on good terms and close friends since childhood, having similar interests and hobbies and sharing dreams and secrets. Thus one day Byron’s brother closed the doors and the curtains in the room so no one could hear them and revealed the secret to his brother: he wanted to make an MMO about Pokemons; Reckful was only 10 years old then, but the idea of making his own game never left him from that moment.
His father is more than 75 years old now, though nothing is known about his occupation, nor about his mother’s name, age or occupation neither. One of Reckful’s former schoolmates once shared his random memories of Reckful: ‘His parents apparently had a huge house south of Ventura Blvd, which was the dividing line between middle-class and high-class homes. He was on the high-class side. His place had the coolest backyard view’; though no one can submit that this post was true, neither can it be proven false.
Reckful dropped out from school when he was 16 years old, suffering from depression which precluded further. He later admitted he was one of the best students in the school, having the highest GPA; he was even going to be a valedictorian at the graduation ceremony, but that was not going to happen. Though he was severely depressed, he never spoke about that with his parents. Reckful felt that nothing good was coming in his future, and tried to kill himself – he took 22 sleeping pills, drank a bottle of wine and tied a plastic bag over his head, and then he felt trapped and fell asleep, but on waking, he understood that he had ripped the bag off his head in sleep. Reckful said that the sleeping pills could kill one even without any additives such as wine or another type of alcohol; however, he just woke up to a terrible headache.
He hasn’t been depressed since, though he felt very pathetic since “Acheron’s Call”, the game he started playing since he was 10 years old, was dying: no one played it any longer, no one cared about it, but this game meant so much to Reckful since he spent six years improving his gaming skills there. Anyway, the game was no longer valuable or relevant, but Reckful felt that it was his only skill and couldn’t imagine himself playing anything else. Finally he started playing “World of Warcraft”, and finally understood that it was not the game that actually mattered, but it was he himself who had the skill and could play whatever game he wanted, and to be good at it.
World of Warcraft PvP success
Reckful once mentioned that he used to spend more than 16 hours a day playing and improving his gaming skills; he never used a mouse, only playing with his keyboard. He said that it was fun to compete with his friends in the game where a mouse was strictly needed, which meant Reckful would lose all the time since he just couldn’t use a mouse properly. When Reckful started playing “World of Warcraft” he was inspired by another gamer, Error, who had the same character class in the game, a rogue. Reckful led his arena team to success for six years, being the first one to hit the 3,000 points arena rating, and his team won the title “Furious Gladiator” for six seasons in a row, being among the highest ranked in arena battles. Reckful also won the MLG (Major League Gaming) “World of Warcraft” tournament which too place in Washington DC in 2010. Before that tournament he was always a runner-up or in third place at MLG.
When Reckful posted a movie in which he showed the most interesting and skillful moments of his arena-playing, the video called “Reckful 3” attracted a million views in no time, and now the video has more than five million views. In 2011 Blizzard banned Reckful’s main account in the game, which made his fans write official petitions to Blizzard asking to bring him back to the game since his success inspired many others to play “World of Warcraft”. Blizzard is well-known for their “ban-hammer waves” when a huge number of accounts get permanently banned for any kind of violations, and once you’re out, you’re out forever. One can create another account in the game, it’s not forbidden, but one can never get the blocked account back. Reckful’s fans created a petition to Blizzard asking the company to unban Reckful’s main account, but the petition didn’t even attract a 100 signatures, so it never happened.
2009, 2019 pic.twitter.com/xvDmPzQVg2
— Reckful (@ByronBernstein) January 14, 2019
Relationships with Jenna Angeles and Blue Madrigal
Reckful is often called a “cathing eye” by his fans, since they know that even if he has a girlfriend, he is always looking for someone to flirt with. He had a relationship with Jenna Angela, a gamer and a “dabbling writer”, for nine years, and even wanted to marry her, but they broke up when Jenna suspected Reckful of cheating on her. He then had another girl = Blue Madrigal, also a gamer and a software engineer, who used to be a cosplayer and a model. The fans say they are absolute opposites, and gravitate to Jenna more. Jenna and Reckful are still friends, and she keeps appearing in his streams, giving the fans hope that they can be together again. Both Jenna and Blue often visit game conventions such as Blizzcon, Dreamhack, etc, however, for now Reckful seems to be alone.
Offline hobbies
Reckful loves photography and tries not to abandon the hobby he’s had for years. He has a portfolio at DeviantArt where he shared his pictures, and his fans supported him, commenting on and liking the photos. Reckful enjoyed taking pictures of nature, city sights, his favourite music band “Red Hot Chili Peppers”, and his ex-girlfriend Blue Madrigal.
Another Reckful hobby is being a Santa Claus for his subscribers and fans. Two years ago he asked his fans to tag him in their wish-lists at Amazon so he could buy them something of their choice. Some people thanked Reckful, admiring his generosity, others criticized his decision to stream how he bought those presents, letting the audience decide whether he should buy this or that present or not. Reckful is also a good guitar player since his school years.
Appearance
Reckful has dark hair and sports a beard almost all the time; his eyes are light-brown. His merciless fans never stop reminding him that he’s balding, so he tries to choose such haircuts that don’t emphasise his hair loss. There’s no precise information about his height, weight or vital statistics.
Net worth
Reckful is still one of the most popular streamers on Twitch with almost 800,000 followers on his channel. His YouTube channel has fewer, around 250,000, but those are the most devoted who check Reckful’s channel on a daily basis. Reckful is known for his unfortunate investments – recently he lost $123,000 he had invested into a company which later filed for bankruptcy, though Reckful insisted he didn’t feel sad because, as he commented his on own post on Twitter, ‘money don’t buy you happiness’. Several times Reckful became a victim of scamming, losing various sums around $4,000 and $15,000. His last hope of become rich and forgetting about any money issues is the game he’s currently working on with his community, called “Everland”, developed by a team of freelancers Reckful hires online (often using his Twitter for the purpose). The game has its own account on Twitter, and doesn’t even have 7,000 subscribers yet, which can be an unpleasant forecast for the game’s future success, as only a few people are really expecting the game to come out, though no one can say what marketing tools Reckful is going to use to promote it. Reckful’s overall net worth is estimated by sources to be around $3.5 million, as of early 2019.
Source: A P
