When Team Liquid won The International in 2024, Insania became the oldest player ever to lift the Aegis.

It was the culmination of over a decade of work — of reaching, and trying, and failing, and trying again. As Insania looked out at the packed crowd of the Royal Arena in Copenhagen, knowing that he was doing it as part of the undisputed best Dota 2 team in the world, he finally felt at peace, like a “huge weight” had been lifted off his shoulders. Winning TI was the one thing that he’d always wanted. For a time, he’d begun to worry that he might not be able to do it after all.

“It was always the goal,” he said. “When I started playing Dota, I didn't care about any other stuff. I just cared about winning TI. I've always been a person that likes to complete tasks that I set out for myself. I don't like quitting, and I want to finish whatever I start.”

A year after that monumental win, Insania announced his retirement from the career that had spanned half his lifetime.

He’d already been thinking about it for a while. The life of an esports pro is a demanding one, especially in a game like Dota, where tournaments happen constantly and there are barely any substantial breaks. Every time he went home to see his family, he found it harder and harder to leave. And he realized that winning in Dota, which had once been the most important thing in his life, was slowly being overtaken by other priorities.

Still, there was that one thing that he hadn’t achieved yet. The one thing that kept him from pulling the trigger. Could he have been able to hang it up so easily if he hadn’t finally reached the mountaintop that eludes so many Dota players?

“Yeah, I don’t think so,” is his response. “I don’t think so.”

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A long journey

Insania began his pro gaming career when he was a teenager, in the game Heroes of Newerth (HoN). It was a relatively small esport at a time when esports was already pretty small. Back then, HoN teams competed for mousepads and headsets, and the multimillion-dollar prize pools that we’ve come to associate with Dota felt worlds away.

“The whole growth of esports is quite incredible,” Insania said. “I think it makes you appreciate where we're at today a lot more, and a lot of the people that came up later won't quite know how nice they have it.”

Esports is a fairly young industry, having only really been established around the turn of the century, and having only become a global phenomenon in the last decade or so, but it’s also now been around long enough for people to have grown up inside of it. Players, coaches, casters, even fans — there are plenty of people who got into esports as teenagers and now look back on its earlier days as adults.

Insania, whose esports journey began at around age 16, turned 31 this year. Thinking back on that kid who first started competing in Heroes of Newerth for fun, who qualified to DreamHack 2012 with his team of total unknowns and managed to finish third, Insania is sure he never could have anticipated the kinds of things he’d go on to accomplish. Many players don’t get the kind of time that he’s gotten.

“I chose this path because I thought I could make it,” he said. “I thought I could get far, and I believed in myself. But, to be honest, I didn't imagine esports would be what it is today. And I never thought I would play until I was 31 years old.”

By the time Insania switched over to Dota 2, he was already coming into it as part of the unofficial “second generation” of players, with the first cohort of Dota stars gradually on their way out. Now, as he departs the scene 10 years later, you could argue there’s a “third generation” coming up, too, with young stars from Eastern Europe beginning to dominate international competition. 

But for Insania, the generational divides don’t have anything to do with age. Some of the players he started out with are gone now; some of them are still playing. What separates each cohort of players is their personal relationship to competing in Dota. Insania’s just happened to change, until the time felt right for him to step away.

“A lot of these people that I grew up playing with will keep playing for a long time,” he said. “They still have that passion, they still have that drive, and that is what they want in life right now. I don't really think retiring is necessarily due to age — for me, at least. You'd be able to play for a much longer time than a lot of people think.”

When you’re young and you feel very strongly about something, it’s easy to think that that feeling will never end. Nobody can really know what the future holds — for the world, or for themselves. All you can do is find a dream worth having, and try your best to make it real.

At one time, all of Insania’s dreams revolved around Dota. He feels exceptionally lucky to have been able to maintain his passion and drive for this long; he attributes that to his teammates and to being part of Team Liquid, which he calls “the greatest org in the world.” Now, though, he doesn’t dream of Dota’s highest peaks so much as he dreams of the things he’s had to sacrifice to reach them.

“I guess what really shifted is that I want to have kids someday,” Insania said. “I want to spend time with my parents. They're getting a bit older. I don't want to wait until it's too late. My grandmother got Alzheimer's pretty early, and I feel like if that happened to my mom, I would never forgive myself. So I want to take all these years that I have and spend them with my family. To me, these things are ultimately a lot more important than winning another TI.”

Coming of age

Funnily enough, when Insania thinks about the most memorable moment in his career, it’s not that fateful TI that comes to mind. It’s the capstone of his time as a player, of course, but much like many esports players who finally get the thing that they want, he remembers more keenly what it felt like to want it.

“It’s when we were on Alliance,” he said, referring to himself and longtime teammates Micke and Boxi. “We were very close to qualifying to TI through DPC points, and it would have been our first TI.”

Alliance’s only path to TI that year — 2019 — would be to get a top 6 placement at a major tournament. Up to that point, though, they’d only ever been one of the first teams out at every major they’d competed in. Even so, they managed to qualify for the EPICENTER Major, a LAN tournament in Moscow, where they had a strong run through the lower bracket. Eventually, they found themselves facing Gambit Esports, a Russian team playing in front of their home crowd, for the final top 6 spot.

You can probably guess how this story ends. Alliance took the series 2-0, and qualified to their first TI. Looking back at the footage from that win, the excitement from Insania, Micke, and Boxi feels markedly different from the stunned relief on their faces after winning TI13. It feels like an explosion of uncontained joy, like stars colliding to create a new galaxy.

“The stakes for that game were so incredibly high, and it was so exciting to play,” Insania recalls. “I feel like everything was against us. But we managed to claw our way there and qualify for TI. It’s a pretty hard memory to beat.”

When you tell the story of Insania, you can’t not mention Micke and Boxi, the two players who’ve been at his side almost the entire time. They’re the longest-lasting trio in Dota history, having played over 1600 games together across their careers. Micke and Boxi, who are both a few years younger than Insania, will be continuing on with Team Liquid in 2026. Due to their age gap, Insania has always known that the two of them would keep going even after he retired.

Still, there’s no denying that for a long time, this trio of players was a package deal. Insania’s relationship with Micke even predates their Dota careers. They began playing together in Heroes of Newerth, when Micke — now 26 — was just 13 years old.

“It’s just insane to think about — half his life, we've been teammates,” Insania said. “I'm super thankful that I got really lucky and met incredible people early on, that I both believed in as players and enjoyed as human beings. I got to play almost my entire career alongside Micke, and I don't know if I would have played for this long if it wasn't for him. We're essentially siblings at this point; we've had every sort of fight that you could imagine; we've laned together for 12 years. So, we’ve been through a lot, and I'm really glad that we both stuck it out ‘til the end.

“And with Boxi, we’ve been a trio for a long time. Me and Boxi also helped push each other to become better people, so I’m also very thankful to him. He's obviously an extremely talented player, and someone I'm happy to have played alongside.”

Learning to lead

If you want an example of how much respect Insania’s teammates have always had for him, all you need to do is look at ‘The Gyrocopter Incident’, which will go down in history as one of his most infamous moments. The long and short of it is that due to a mistake in timekeeping during the draft, Insania accidentally locked in a hero that he meant to ban, a brutal mistake that would cost his team the best-of-one elimination match they were playing in. Oh, and it happened at The International 2019 — the very tournament that they’d fought so hard to qualify to.

But instead of blaming him or giving up, the rest of the Alliance players reassured him that it was okay and tried to make it work, even though it was certainly doomed from the start, and there would be no second chances for them after they lost.

“The fact that they all supported him, like, "hey, this is all gonna work out" — I think that shows loyalty in both ways,” said Team Liquid coach Blitz, looking back on the incident. “He was so loyal to them throughout the years that they were going to be loyal to him and stick by him. In that moment, where he needed them the most, they were the most supportive.”

At the time, Insania was 25 years old, and had already come a long way from where he started. But joining Team Liquid later that year would be the catalyst for the biggest part of his growth as a player and as a leader. He credits two people with influencing him the most in this regard: his coach, Blitz, and his girlfriend.

“I think that being in a proper adult long-term relationship helps you grow a lot as a person,” Insania said. “It helps you work on your problems, because when you're with someone you really care about, you don't want to negatively affect them. And sometimes, I think being on a team is like being in a relationship with five different people at once, especially when you’ve been together for so many years. It helps you see your shortcomings, and it helps you get over them, ‘cause it's always coming from a good place when it's people that are so close to you, and everybody's just trying to make things work for the better.”

He isn’t the first player to compare being on a team to being in a relationship; it’s a truth that many realize quickly. You have to be willing to be honest, to swallow your pride, to admit your faults, to never let the frustrations fester. When it comes to the upper echelon of competitive gaming, there are plenty of people with the skills to compete with the best. But raw skill isn’t what makes someone a good competitor. (Truthfully, most professionals would say it’s the barest of bare minimums.) To be a real pro player, you have to have the mindset of one.

It’s impossible for anyone to be truly universally beloved — one of the facts of life is that there’s always going to be someone who doesn’t like you — but as far as esports figures go, Insania comes pretty close. A big part of that is his naturally likeable personality, but it’s also due to how generous he is with his time. Even after all these years, he’s never taken his fame as a player for granted, and he understands what even a small gesture can mean to a fan.

“There was a time when I was a fan, too,” he said. “I was watching games, I was looking up to the previous Liquid roster, I would always read any interview that came out. And when I then got into the same position, I tried to be the person that I know I would have been happy to see.

“Getting my stuff signed by [MATUMBAMAN] and the old Liquid roster, it really made my day. I was so excited and so happy. It doesn't take a lot from them. It's literally just five signatures. And I've done that a billion times. If you want to commit to giving everybody that you meet at an event a signature, you're just investing 3 hours of your life to make a bunch of people’s day. You give them a memory that they will remember for a really long time.”

As a player, Insania was a rare sort, a true esports professional: someone who understood completely what it meant to be a teammate, a leader, and a public figure. He retired as someone who was deeply respected not just as a competitor, but as a person. He’s left his mark on the Dota scene in a multitude of different ways, but out of all of them, that one might be the one that lasts the longest.

Read more: Farewell, Insania: Letters from the Dota community

Closing the door

Less than a month after his official retirement, it still doesn’t feel real to Insania that he won’t eventually be going back on the circuit.

“It feels really weird,” he admitted. “I don't know what to expect. It's like when you finish school, and you have your first summer break. It just feels like I have some time off from tournaments. I don't think it's really settled in yet. But I'm really excited. I've been seeing a lot of friends and spending more time with my family, which has been great.”

After only living a certain way for a decade, he’s slowly figuring out what it’s like to live without constantly having to prepare for the next tournament. To him, spending all these years competing was always the “egotistical” thing to do, something that he worked at for the sake of himself. It kept him from seeing his family, but it also kept them from seeing him. Now that he’s accomplished all he wanted to accomplish professionally, Insania is looking to expand his world past the bounds of Dota, and devote his time to other things.

The dreams he has now are smaller than a TI win: to learn the guitar, to spend time with his family, to pick through his Steam library. And there is one big loose end that he needs to tie up. In 2020, he earned an MVP award at ESL One Germany, which meant he won a Mercedes-Benz car… that he couldn’t drive, because he never got his license.

“I’ve been putting it off for way too long,” Insania said, laughing. “People have been making fun of me because I’ve had a car for a few years, but no license. So that is something I definitely need to do.”

When it comes to all the things he’s learned over his time as a Dota pro, and things he’d like to pass on to the new generation of players, Insania doesn’t even know where to start. How do you distill the ebbs and flows of an entire adult life into just a few words of wisdom? He eventually lands on emotional maturity and dealing with negativity as the two most important things for any aspiring pro to master.

Going forward, he wants to stick around in the Dota scene in some way, shape, or form, though he hasn’t yet decided exactly how. 

“I’ve always found that it just comes to me at some point,” he said. “When I decided to switch to Dota instead of going to university, it felt like the right decision. I knew it was right. I haven't really found that yet, for what I want to do next. But I think once I know, it'll be quite clear.”

It’ll be a new beginning, whatever it is, but Insania is in no rush to figure it out. He’s already had the kind of career that most people can only hope for. He lived a whole lot of life in the ten years that he played Dota professionally, and in the end, he was able to stand on the biggest stage of them all, a champion. He chased his dream, and he caught it. May we all be so lucky.

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