Stewie2K: My parents thought I would be a failure
DreamHack / Adela SznajderMIBR’s Jake ‘Stewie2K’ Yip is a Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Major winner, but he has revealed that he had very little support from his parents as he pursued an esports career.
“I could hear her saying how I’m gonna be a failure in life, saying how I’m gonna be homeless, I’m gonna be begging for money,”
Speaking candidly in a player profile video for the FACEIT London Major, the North American player says: “my parents were the stereotypical Asian parents who wanted me to grow up to be a real successful lawyer, doctor, dentist, something that’s common.”
“My parents actually kind of gave up on me. I was listening in on a phone call one day and I could hear her saying how I’m gonna be a failure in life, saying how I’m gonna be homeless, I’m gonna be begging for money,” he continues.
The 20-year-old, who helped Cloud9 to become the first North American team to win a CS:GO Major at ELEAGUE Boston in January, goes on to say that he thought his mother “kinda failed at being a mom.”
“I just said ‘I might as well just leave then, I don’t want to be here.’ At the time I was 17 and I just flew to LA,” he reveals.
Stewie2K would go on to be picked up by Cloud9 shortly after his move to Los Angeles, but even that achievement came with some significant hurdles.
“The idea was that we bring in fresh blood, a new hunger to the team, and not some of this old guard that had been recycled over and over,” says Tres ‘stunna’ Saranthus, who was Cloud9’s coach at the time.
“We wanted to bring someone with a new perspective on the game and perhaps someone that could reignite where we left off.”
Stewie then picks up the story again, recalling the day when he was offered the Cloud9 contract and having to ask the organization to wait until he turned 18 so that he could sign it:
“A week later stunna, gave me a call and he talked about how the contract was ready for me,” he explains. “I was only 17 and my parents would never sign the contract for sure, so I told them ‘my birthday is in a few weeks, if you can wait for it I’m gonna sign it right away.’ ”
“I was only 17 and my parents would never sign the contract, so I told them ‘if you can wait for it I’m gonna sign it right away’ “
Stewie2K’s addition to the team came as a surprise to some, and the news was greeted with a good deal of backlash from the “old guard” that stunna mentions, but the doubters were soon silenced by the young player’s performances on the server.
And the rest, as they say, is history.
Stewie2K joined the Brazilian SK Gaming side, now playing under the MIBR banner, just a few months after the historic ELEAGUE Major win. The young player explains that some members of Cloud9 lost motivation after their amazing achievement and says that this is what his departure.
MIBR have advanced to the New Champions Stage of the FACEIT London Major and will face compLexity Gaming in the quarter-finals on Thursday, September 20.
If they win the $1 million tournament, Stewie2K and Tarik ‘tarik’ Celick, who joined him on MIBR from Cloud9 in July, will join a very short list of players that have won a CS:GO Major back-to-back.