When you arrive at Trink’s address you won’t pull up to the house itself, but rather to a driveway long enough to allow a plane to take off with an attendant whose job is to make sure the collection of high-priced vehicles belonging to Trink and his guests has room to breathe while parked.
Now, depending on which side of the millennial–Gen Z line you sit, FaZe has grown into either a confusing digital behemoth that serves as a stark reminder of how the world has passed you by, or a cultural force that bonds a disparate groups of gamers, athletes, musicians, influencers and content creators into an amorphous digital squad that has become the internet’s version of the cool kids’ table in your high school cafeteria.
“Gamers are the next generation of the new iteration of rock stars,” says Trink, who was an executive for several music labels before becoming FaZe CEO in 2018.
. The universe they created now includes more than 90 esports pros and content creators from around the globe, along with a growing cohort of athletes and musicians who play video games but also post YouTube videos and create Twitch streams around gaming, fratty humor and lifestyle content, giving millions of fans an intimate peek into their lives.
Just before the NFL draft in April, FaZe announced that it had invited Kyler Murray to be its newest member with a social-media-friendly video of Banks channeling Roger Goodell and making the Cardinals quarterback FaZe’s No.
The FaZe Clan page has more than eight million, more YouTube subs than the Lakers, Cowboys and Manchester United combined.
Ben Simmons took note of FaZe a decade ago, when he was a teenager in Melbourne who had started playing Call of Duty whenever he didn’t have a basketball in his hands.
When you see guys who you are able to relate to, connect with and would hang out with outside of video games, that makes it so much easier.
As he began attracting viewers, Temperrr, then a part of the YouTube channel FaZe Sniping, recruited Apex, who had been bombarding him with messages on YouTube, to help him make more Call of Duty videos.
One day Temperrr may get an invite to Simmons’s basement for a gaming session, the next he may be shooting hoops with Snoop Dogg and surprising him with FaZe merch.
In 2016, the company moved its creators to Los Angeles and put them up in a series of mansions, the most recent being a 36,000-square-foot Burbank fortress where live-in creators mixed Rick Ross levels of opulence with gaming content.
Sometimes, FaZe even overshadows members of the traditional mainstream: Take, for example, a story from September 2019, where music mogul Jimmy Iovine threw a birthday party at his home for his wife, Liberty Ross.
He often streams on Twitch playing Fortnite or CoD and has built a massive social following across several platforms. In 2018, he joined rappers Drake and Travis Scott, as well as celebrity gamer Tyler “Ninja” Blevins in a record-breaking Twitch stream of Fortnite.
It’s not a surprise to see any athlete flip on their own Twitch stream, from Suns star Devin Booker to Murray, who boasts more than 70,000 followers on Twitch.
Of course, the gaming and content world is not as simple as just sharing your passions with the world.
FaZe Rain, who is well known for his forwardness with his viewers, was involved in a very public mental health and drug addiction crisis in 2020, tweeting about his issues with depression and prescription pills.
Rain would eventually seek help for his drug addiction, and in February of this year proudly shared he was six months sober.
Banks himself struggled with mental health issues in 2016, when he took a break from FaZe after experiencing drug addiction, which he revealed in detail on his YouTube page.
“That’s to me the coolest part about social media, and we’re slowly losing some of that, because people are so careful of the opinions they share.
Tfue’s lawsuit was not the only contract dispute at FaZe, which also heard public grumbling from Fortnite streamer Dennis “Cloakzy” Lepore, who complained on a Twitch stream about his FaZe deal two years ago.
For now, different companies categorize some workers as independent contractors and others as full-time employees, with no overarching, industry-wide standard.
Many gaming companies also negotiate sponsorship agreements for their talent, which exist in gray areas when it comes to talent-agency laws in different states.
Because of the still-evolving nature of the industry, many players are not represented formally and negotiate their own contracts.
“I think the big problems are lack of bargaining power and contracts that aren’t really negotiated at arm’s length,” says Catherine Ruckelshaus, the legal director at the National Employment Law Project.
“It is very important the talent in this industry understands their worth,” says Ryan Morrison, the cofounder and CEO of Evolved Talent Agency, a firm that represents gamers.
Trink admits the company has hit obstacles as it navigates dealing with talent, yet another parallel to his time as a record executive.
“But we can’t just do it kneejerk, try to fix the problem tomorrow, because people are raining hell on us.
He laments how many layers have gotten between the artists and the consumer in the music industry, but believes FaZe can deliver its product more efficiently—as if a record company had set up a streaming service of its own.
“I believe that in the next five years they’ll be the biggest lifestyle brand in the world,” says Paul Hamilton, who co-owns the Call of Duty League’s Atlanta FaZe team with his own company, Atlanta Esports Ventures.
Atlanta FaZe has been one of the more successful CoD teams. Atlanta was in first place at the end of the 2020 regular season and, earlier this year, took home a $200,000 prize as the Stage 1 Major Champions.