Professional player Natu expresses his concerns and viewpoints looking to the future of his career in competitive Counter-Strike.
Being a professional player for team 3DMAX and with 15-years of experience playing Counter-Strike, Finnish pro Joona "natu" Leppänen has taken to Facebook to raise his concerns about the future of his career in competitive CS:GO after 3DMAX yesterday announced plans to disband, following a five-year run.
In his post, Natu describes how the 3DMAX crew was made up of a handful of people who ran the organisation as a hobby and went on to say "I think things started to build up to overwhelming proportions with CS:GO and Esports evolving to bigger scales in very recent times for being a hobby."
Natu goes on to say he will stay with the team for the meantime though the organisation governing them will disband on May 1st. He will be weighing his options when thinking about his future in CS:GO and eSports because although being a pro means you put in full-time working hours, you don't necessarily get an equivalent pay for the time you put in unless you're part of the top-five teams in the world.
However, for myself personally, this is an opportunity to take a bit of a timeout on what I want to do in the future and figure out my options when it comes to CS:GO and Esports. In short term, I will be playing with the boys business as usual but when it comes down to long term commitments – I don't have an answer at this point. Playing on high level competitively takes a ton of time – something equal to a full time job, but is hardly making players similar income. Unless you are one of the ”~top5 teams” in the world. That being said and me having a family of my own – I have to be a 100% sure on how I spend my time.
One thing is for certain though, you won't be getting rid of me either way. I love Esports and we're only scratching the surface of the potential of this business.
I'm going to end this with lending a few words from a wise Polish man: No fear, my friends.”
In short, while we will see Natu continue to participate in competitive games with his team, we cannot be sure how far into the future he will remain a professional player, but he has expressed an interest in other areas of eSports, having casted games since early this year, covering ESL One Katowice and the ongoing Championship Series earlier this month. One thing you can be sure of though, is that you can find all the latest updates and tournament news here at GosuGamers.
Headline image by Patrick Strack and ESL.
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