After 17 years, Richard Lewis wants to retire from esports

Up until this point, Richard Lewis’ career as an esports journalist has been a wild ride full of controversy, epic moments, and great achievements.

His brand of investigative journalism and harsh criticism brought him both trouble and two Esports Journalist of the Year awards.

Why is Richard Lewis contemplating retiring from esports

It is said that near the age of 40, you’re likely to hit some sort of mid-life crisis. In Lewis’ case, it’s hard to say for certain what the cause of his early retirement might be. But we can speculate.

CS:GO is going in a direction that he doesn’t like

Both Richard Lewis and Duncan “Thorin” Shields have expressed their disappointment with the fact that ESL Gaming, which is by far the biggest CS:GO tournament organizer, was bought this year by Saudi Arabia. Given Lewis’ political views and values, this move was a disaster for the game he has invested most of his journalistic efforts in.

The desire to do bigger things

Lewis has spoken multiple times on his YouTube channel about his interest in politics and his love for fantasy writing. Now that he’s pushing 40 and CS:GO no longer offers him any joy, perhaps he’s considering starting his writing career.

He certainly can write and he seems to have the type of perfectionism and persistence required for running a literary marathon, so we might just see him in 3-4 years announcing his first novel. Time will tell.

Fatigue

Working in esports is not exactly easy, especially if you do it at a high level. From the outside, it may seem that you’re simply writing about video games. But like any other industry, esports has its fair share of problems.

From cheating scandals to match-fixing, there’s a lot to investigate and fight against. And for many years, as an investigative journalist, Richard Lewis had to play in the front line and often tank a lot of criticism for it. No matter how strong you are mentally, thousands of insults and death threats can wear you down.

By The Numbers

In CS:GO, Richard Lewis is perhaps best known for his podcast, By The Numbers. Over a period of 7 years, he’s done several hundred episodes and provided the community with an in-depth analysis of everything that happened in CS:GO.

Upon announcing his intention to retire, Lewis said that he’ll give up on the podcast as well, but that the show will go on. It is not yet known who will replace him but we do know that the brand will not be allowed to die.

Unfulfilled ambitions

Early this year, Richard Lewis announced his intention to fight for a third Journalist of the Year award. It remains to be seen if that is still an objective for him or if he decided to leave esports with just two trophies. Of course, if he does indeed decide to put an end to his esports career. For the time being, nothing is certain.

Header: Richard Lewis