Florida Mayhem player zappis retires to finish his education

Overwatch League player Joonas “zappis” Alakurtti has announced his retirement. The former Florida Mayhem and Team Gigantti off tank has decided to finish his Master’s degree instead of continuing his Overwatch career. Most well known for his Zarya gameplay, zappis is a considerably older player than many others in the scene, at 30 years of age.

As of this year I'm not looking to continue my career as a player in Overwatch.

Read: https://t.co/d2n5czrcNU

— Joonas Alakurtti (@zappisOW) January 3, 2020

Retiring from Overwatch League

“I’ve been playing Overwatch since the first closed beta release and I must say I have many fond memories and I’ve met many wonderful people on this journey,” zappis said in a Twitlonger post. “It would be impossible to list all the people here so I’m not even going to try it, there’s so many from my teammates, national teams, players, team staff, blizzard employees, event organizers, fans and so on…”

Zappis goes on to describe the key reason for his retirement. After finishing a Bachelor’s degree in law, he plans to pursue his Master’s degree, which doesn’t leave him with much time. In addition, zappis states that he is doing an internship in early 2020, which means even less time to play video games. While he may continue to stream, he will not compete in Overwatch anymore.

Zappis to pursue Masters

During his time in professional Overwatch, zappis led Team Gigantti to numerous first-place finishes in Europe’s Overwatch Contenders. He also played for Team Finland at the Overwatch World Cup for the past few years, where the team placed 4th and 5 – 8th in 2016 and 2018, respectively. Unfortunately, the Florida Mayhem did not perform as well during the Inaugural Season of the Overwatch League, seeing only a second-to-last placement.

Nevertheless, most of the players in the professional Overwatch scene are in their early 20’s. One of the limitations in esports competition is age because reflexes are shown to peak between the ages of 19 – 24, although whether this actually impacts gameplay is often debated. What do you think about this situation? Let us know about your opinion, and keep up with Daily Esports for all of your Overwatch coverage.