Stephano: End Of An Era
One of the greatest foreigners to ever play Starcraft Ilyes "Stephano" Satouri announces his retirement to return to his studies. He was a player like no other for a variety of reasons.
It seems to have been as drawn out as the last terminal death rattle of an elderly relative but it finally happened. Ilyes "Stephano" Satouri’s career in SC2 came to an end not with a bang, barely with a whimper if brutal truth be told, but no one can deny the impact he had on Starcraft 2 during his reign. The most successful “foreigner” of all time, he seemed to be one of the few Europeans that truly dominated, immune to the problems of patches and those pesky Koreans. With his retirement not only does the game lose one of its shining lights in terms of brilliance but also one of the most unique and divisive personalities the game is ever likely to throw up.
He gets out at the right time it seems. Since Heart of The Swarm his shine had undoubtedly faded, a combination of changes to key game mechanics and disinterest. Part of an organisation he admitted to never really feeling part of, playing in a competitive environment that doesn’t seem to have been enhanced by Blizzard’s flawed handling of their World Championship Series project, it felt like he was going through the motions of late. His best days were behind him and perhaps this is true of the game itself. With close to $250,000 in the bank in prize money alone he does what few ever can – improve their lives outside of e-sports thanks to their involvement in it.
In the tributes that have undoubtedly been published before this many people will list his impressive achievements and talk about him in glowing terms for his play. The well informed will know that when he said that his ability came easily he wasn’t lying. I’ve been told first hand about how little he would practice before tournaments, best illustrated by his win at WCS Europe. Every pro on the circuit knew the story but I heard the best version from Stephano’s good friend Samayan "BlinG" Kay:
“Well, he hadn’t played SC2 for like a week but when he travelled out there he hit delays and all sorts of shit. Not just that, he lost his equipment and when he finally turned up he had to go straight into a game using random gear. He’d had virtually no sleep but still managed to play all his first day games without even losing a map. Any other player would crumble under that or withdraw from a tournament. Stephano… He just wins.”
Respect him too for not being unrecognisably altered by the Evil Genius machine. It is an organisation that gobbles up talent and looks to mould everyone within it into the right shaped cog for the profit making machine. The rewards a tenure with EG brings are worth it in financial terms but it is for most a Faustian pact that comes at the cost of a portion of personality and freedom to express it. The Stephano they picked up was the Stephano that leaves them.
What the scene loses most of all is the personality that he managed to preserve, for good or ill, to everything he touched in Starcraft. At a time when e-sports wants, contradictorily, to have the honesty of spontaneity coupled with the sterility of professionalism Ilyes never bought into any of that. You never saw him adopting exaggerated affectations to try and make him more popular, to give the illusion of personality in the absence of one. Neither did he toe the line in spitting out generic platitudes before reeling off lists of sponsors. He was just himself and if he never understood how serious people could take this e-sports business it was because he never wanted to. Whichever side of the fence you were on, he was always interesting and in my time covering the game he was one of the more interesting characters to interact with and to cover.
There were plenty of things it was easy for the crowd to get hysterical about if they wanted to. His unknowingly public claims to have had sex with a 14 year old, and the subsequent worries that he might only “be interested in kids and milfs now” are never going to sit easy with grown men, even if many fans were ill-advisedly pointing out that in some parts of the world the age of consent is exactly that or much lower. Equally, at a time when people have never been more sensitive over terrorism and airport security, it’s probably not a good idea to post photos of you smuggling knives through customs either. It’s also something of a faux pas to make jokes about your fellow German competitors being Nazis… Yeah, turns out that they’re a bit sensitive about that period of their nation’s history.
Still, I’m not pious in the same way those who were desperately trying to see an e-sports talent crushed into the ground clearly were. The reasons I always saw to dislike him – if you were so inclined – was the utter disdain he clearly held the e-sports industry in. It was plain to see for even people flitting round the edges of the orb of his existence that he didn’t respect his opponents, didn’t respect the tournaments that paid him money, didn’t respect the press that tried to make him accessible to the fans that he also, for the most part, was indifferent about. He had the aura of a man who couldn’t understand why he was good at what he was, nor even take joy in it. For Stephano his esports career, in all its gifted brilliance, was a means to an end and that end was always far, far away from this madding crowd.
Undoubtedly he took more pleasure from the after-parties than he did the competitions themselves. He was part of that unspoken tribe of e-sports personalities, many of whom have risen to its highest echelons, who treat the industry as a source of beer money and cheap celebrity thrills. Again, in this area Stephano excelled almost as much as his playing. The reports on Rakaka of him going “full exorcist” might lead some to believe that he wasn’t much of a drinker. The sight of him slamming shots at a free bar and aggressively urging people to join him would put paid to that notion and you could see that often.
For his friends at e-sports events he was the life and soul of whatever party was going and he probably even started more than a few all by himself. Every room he was in he could be spotted immediately, heard over the music telling stories in his unmistakable accent, gesticulating wildly to the assembled crowd… He was one of the few players I’ve ever seen in e-sports with a genuine entourage. Yet by the same token he was brash, arrogant, disinterested in a lot of the people around him and made no effort to hide it. Many a person could tell you about being shunned after being introduced or being subjective to pithy put downs for having the temerity to treat meeting him as anything less than a privilege.
So, the reason I won’t be lamenting his leaving as a complete loss will be the stories such as these. A highly rated player on finding out he was in Stephano’s group in an upcoming tournament approach him and say “we’re in the same group as each other” only to be told from behind sunglasses “then I feel sorry for you” before the Frenchman walked away. It is the rock and roll thing to do and it is a fantastic anecdote, one that perhaps best sums up the player. Many will raise a smile upon reading it. For me though it doesn’t sit right that someone who commanded such respect rarely gave it back to many professionals. Not publicly, where such antics could be dismissed as hype generation or mind games, but privately, where clearly it was a genuine reflection of the contempt he had for many who wished they had his talents. It is both naive and childish to expect e-sports to retain what once was the thing that made it so great – the sense of fraternity within the niche, all levels of the hierarchy rubbing shoulders with each other. Satouri wasn’t one for fraternity. After all, he was just passing through.
Despite this, and perhaps even because of it, the scene shall undoubtedly miss him. He was always great to watch, great to listen to and, speaking as a member of the press, great to mythologise. Few personalities this size have talents to match and in that regard Stephano was peerless. Few e-sports retirements are permanent. This is one player, sadly, who you sense will not be back. With an uncertain future ahead for the game it is poor timing for us to lose someone who did so much to elevate it in the past.