PandaTank: pro gaming career in SA isn’t sustainable

South African poster boy for eSport success, Robert “PandaTank” Botha has retired from professional gaming.

He posted the announcement on his Facebook page:

This will be the official announcement of my retirement from pro-gaming. I’m sure a lot of you will want to know why. Let’s just put it this way, all good things must eventually come to an end and being a professional gamer in South Africa isn’t a sustainable career. I’m getting older and I need to start thinking about what my next adventures in life will be.

It sucks to be leaving behind something I put so much time and effort into over the last few years. However, on the other side of the coin, I have already achieved everything from gaming that I set out to, being mainly traveling, playing on the main stage in front of a massive live audience, attending Homestory cup (no jokes) and representing my country. Therefore I have no regrets in the choices I made or the way that I spent my time.

All-in-all it has been an amazing, life changing experience. I got to travel to places I probably would never have been able to (or at least not any time soon), I made tons of awesome friends along the way and I even managed to inspire the odd person here and there through my “triumphs”.

For one last time I just want to give a few thanks to the people that made it possible for me. Most importantly my family. They were always there for me and extremely supportive of my choices, both emotionally and financially.

I’d like to thank CMStorm for giving me the opportunity to be the first South African pro-gamer. It was a privilege to be sponsored by them. While my results were no where near as good as I wanted them to be while a part of the team, I still had some small moments of glory, such as knocking out an IEM Champion (WW.Sting) at Dreamhack Summer. Not bad for a dude that practices on 200 ping.

Big thanks to both Ben “MrBitter” Nicol and Dennis “TaKe” Gehlen for letting me stay at their places free of charge while I was overseas. You dudes are really awesome and I owe you.

And last but not least, a huge thanks to all my fans and supporters over the last 2 years. I know I didn’t always show my full appreciation by replying to all of your messages, or playing custom games with you, etc. But just know that every time I saw a supportive message from you guys, or knew that you were watching one of my games it meant a lot to me. You guys really made it all worth it.

Sincerely,

PandaTank

Botha must be praised for putting SA pro gaming on the map with his StarCraft 2 skills and inspiring a new generation of upcoming eSport stars.

While it is disheartening to learn that Botha regards eSporting as an unsustainable career, it’s not a huge surprise. South Africa has a marginal gaming market compared to international regions such as the US, Europe and Asia.

However, our R2.2 billion local gaming market is on a growth path with forecasts of a R3.2 billion market by 2017. With this will come a growing eSport scene – so to the next generation of South African eSport players we say keep fighting the good fight because there is light at the end of the tunnel.