For the longer careers I think you have to look into BW players. Off the top of my head Bisu might be the standout, starting in 2005 and still competing at a decently high level in ASL aged 32. Flash's career is slightly shorter, starting in 2007. He was very young so he's only 29 now, but he's still the best in the world. Even Stork (33) made a (less impressive) comeback recently and with Jaedong (32) in the last ASL, every member of TBLS can make it to ASL which is just astonishing.

The payouts in Starcraft and Starcraft 2 are pretty low at the moment. The only way most of the pro scene can sustain itself at the moment is through streaming and coaching revenue.

It's also why almost nobody is trying to break into the scene, and why you see the same players who have been competing for decades place well.

And yes, Serral and Reynor are exceptions to this.

Maru is a SCII player which might not be a thing in 6 years seeing the diminishing prize pools etc. Meanwhile Morten Andersen did 25 years in the NFL which isn’t going away anytime soon.

Beyond game longevity, each game can only support a tiny number of professionals and the games balance is often changed in response to overly dominant strategies. On top of this as you gain fame people will prepare to counter you specifically. Combined with injuries or other out of game issues and it’s extremely uncommon for people to be self sufficient for very long.

On a smaller (more grassroots-ish) scale, the Smash Melee scene has mang0 and Hungrybox, who've been playing since ~2007/2008ish (there are a few others in there, but at this point they're generally the oldest ones still competing at the top).

Also Dota, where a handful of still-active pros have been playing since Dota All Stars. Not to mention the larger number of content creators and streamers who are no longer playing in pro competitive leagues, but are still literally professional video game players.

There are also several AoE 2 players who are coming up on or have already passed their 10th anniversary of professional play.

Also looking at retirement age doesn't make a lot of sense, because a lot of gaming careers start younger than NFL careers.

Daigo Umehara is 40 and still winning tournaments. It could be that fighting games require different skills from RTS/Overwatch type games.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daigo_Umehara

The Capcom style fighting games definitely depend on speed, accuracy, prediction, and being unpredictable. What it lacks from RTS are the attention demands of many things happening in different places with a fog of war so that you have to keep the probable possibilities in your head with timings to counter them, and their proportionate responses to maximize gain or minimize loss.

> There's hope that Microsoft/ActivisionBlizzard may figure out how to monetize the free-to-play game to sustain & grow it.

I genuinely hope not. Not everything needs to grow and StarCraft 1 is fine the way it is.

I'd happily pay for more SC2 non-competitive in-game items like skins, announcers, etc, if only they'd make more. Even the ones that exist, I missed the window/requirements so can't even pay for them.

StarCraft/Brood War was the most fun I had playing 1v1 and FFA. It's hard to go back to the janky unit routing, small control groups, etc after being spoiled with SC2. The Remastered graphics update is nice but somehow loses some of the charm. It's more pleasant to watch now than the VGA graphics would be though. Was there ever a Brood War units/maps done in the SC2 engine?

My observation from my brief time of being a spectator in that world was the second tier or lower first tier players would train specifically to beat the strategies of the top players. I think the game generally is too hard to be all-around great against every other play style and strategy.

Or Warcraft 3 pros that are still going 20 years later: Moon, Focus, Lyn, etc.