‘Who can blame him?’: Why TenZ’s competitive VALORANT retirement makes total sense

TenZ recently revealed he’s stepping away from professional play, leaving VALORANT fans and content creators thanking the Sentinels star for the memories over the years. His decision to step back from competitive play and focus on content creation isn’t a surprising one, however, given the precedent set by many of his peers in the esports space.

TenZ sent shockwaves across the VALORANT community on Sept. 14, with his decision to step away from competitive play. Sentinels’ star controller revealed in his retirement video that he first disclosed (before Champions Seoul kicked off) to his teammates in person this year would be his last in the pro scene. TenZ added it was a no-brainer decision for him to switch over to full-time content creation with the success he’s been having with it—with his teammates in accord with his plans during the first reveal.

The cat’s finally out of the bag as VALORANT’s 2024 season recently concluded—with most of the fans agreeing you can’t blame TenZ for prioritizing his already successful content creation career while having more time to spend with his fiancée Kyedae and his family.

Many echoed Rod “Slasher” Breslau’s sentiment that pro esports players are “incentivized” to retire early thanks to the benefits of content creation over competition. “One of esports’ many issues is if you’re a star player with a massive following, it’s more lucrative and less stressful to stream instead of compete,” he said on X (formerly Twitter) shortly after TenZ’s announcement. TenZ follows in the footsteps of many former esports pros, including the likes of Shroud and Ninja, who took a massive fanbase built during their competitive careers and made the jump to content creation.

Many fans are gutted by who they consider “the face of Sentinels and VALORANT” retiring; however, they admire TenZ’s decision as it will allow him to stream from his home day in and out without requiring him to travel across the globe to VCT tournaments constantly.

Fans are also grateful to VALORANT pros for not leaking any information on TenZ’s retirement. Players are often among the first few to discover any team changes because they practice against other teams during scrims. TenZ’s retirement would’ve been apparent, provided Sentinels had known about his decision for a few months, leaving the organization ample time for replacement trials.

TenZ had been streaming a few days every month up until now, limiting his streams to a couple of hours occasionally to ensure he has enough time for individual practice and scrims. The VALORANT superstar had already been streaming for a couple of hours before the announcement dropped. During the same stream, he confirmed he’ll now be streaming lots more—mixing up the usual streams with a little variety (including games other than VALORANT) now that he has considerably more hours in the day.

With streaming platforms opting out of renewing exclusive streamer contracts this year, TenZ has been streaming on Twitch and YouTube simultaneously. He has over four million followers on Twitch, 2.27 million subscribers on YouTube, and 2.2 million followers on TikTok.