Why Do eSports Players Retire So Young?

Did you know eSports athletes have shorter careers than NFL players? That is right most gamers are done by their mid-20s. In Blizzard Entertainment’s Overwatch League, the average age gamers hang up their keyboards is just 23! In the NFL, the average player is 27, and this is expected to rise as players have access to improved health treatments and anti-aging regimens.

eSports players typically sign pro contracts when they are 17 and out of the pro scene just a few years later. Professional players that make it past their early 20s are a rare breed. Do you have to have the lightning-fast reflexes of an 18-year-old to compete, or are there other factors causing these cyber athletes to quit so early?

Are eSports Players Burnt Out?

Most eSports professionals live in gamer houses. These houses are established by professional teams who put all of the players into a single house where they eat, sleep and, most importantly, train! The training schedule for the average professional gamer is completely insane. It is extremely common for pro gamers to play 12 hours per day, 6 days a week! During these 12 hours, players study specific scenarios, come up with tactics, and play over and over again. Players who aren’t willing to endure these crazy hours are quickly booted from the team.

While playing 12 hours of eSports a day won’t damage your body as other traditional sports, it still can absolutely wreck an athlete emotionally. It is just not sustainable for a person to play 12 hours a day, every day, week after week. Eventually, players reach their breaking point, and when they do, they often quit for good. The fact that eSports aren’t as physically taxing as traditional sports actually makes athletes more susceptible to burnout. Take football, for example, if you tried to play football for 12 hours a day, your body would break way before your mind does. However, in eSports, you can just keep playing and playing until you eventually suffer a minor mental breakdown.

Do eSports Players Make a Lot of Money?

While the top eSports players who rank at https://eplay-info.com/en/ can earn millions of dollars, these players represent a tiny percent of professionals. Most professional gamers are just scraping by and living a fairly Spartan life. What tends to happen is that pro gamers reach their early 20s and realize they aren’t making much money, so they start looking for other ventures. And as professional gaming is so time-consuming, it is not possible to be a part-time professional. You need to be all in or all out.

It is common for retired pro gamers to go to college, start companies or become content creators. Thanks to platforms like YouTube and Stream, washed-up professional gamers can actually make way more money and work way less in a stress-free environment. Why would you live in a gamer house with 10 other people and play 12 hours a day for $50k per year when you could live in your mansion and earn $50k a month streaming for a few hours a day?

Thanks to the internet and the explosion in popularity of eSports, there are now so many other avenues to make money rather than just winning tournaments. Former pro gamers such as Fatal1ty have built successful gaming hardware companies, while Dennis “Thresh” Fong built a $100 million gaming media empire.

eSports Players’ Priorities Start to Switch

When you are 18 or 20, you can spend 24/7 playing and obsessing about games. You don’t have many responsibilities or serious goals. However, once you get to your mid-20s, when many pro gamers retire, you need to start making serious decisions. At this age, people start building careers and families. It becomes incredibly hard to balance family life and career aspirations while also playing games at a high level. In their mid-20s, many pro gamers decide to pivot away from playing and take on other roles in the gaming world, such as building companies or creating content.

Medical professionals say there is no reason that a 30-year-old would not be able to compete with a 20-year-old in professional eSports. All of the talks about slowing in reaction time take place at a later age. Also, older players have a lot more experience and are able to predict the opponent’s moves more effectively than younger players. The reason eSports players are hanging up their keyboards so young is that the lifestyle is grueling. Only very few players can get rich, and it is not compatible with having a family.