Shivam ‘ShivFPS’ Patel is a man of many titles. To some, he’s the OG Bangalore player, maining the character long before she became a dominant force in 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Apex Legends. He’s the Solo Queue Warlord, the captain of Pro League team 40%Worse, a full-time Twitch streamer, and one of the most en🐈tertaining Apex p🐽layers in the world. For the most part, people simply refer to him as ‘Shiv’.
But recently, he&rsquo🎶;s gained another moniker, as the first major streamer and esports player I’ve seen open up about their injuries and using adaptive controllers to play their games. That’s a bit of a mouthful, and so is the injury that forced his hand.
“The injury I have is called De Quervain's tenosynovitis,” he explains to me over a Discord call. “It's basically thumb tendonitis. So I have tendonitis in both my thumbs and it causes tons of pain. It's very difficult to play games and everything really. When you’re playing a game, playing an esport, and tournaments and stuff, it's really difficult.”
The injury was caused by Shiv’s gaming habits. As someone w🅘ho streamed for ten to 12 hours a day, six or seven days a week, for years, repetitive strain was almost inevitable. But hindsight is 20:20, and he knows now that he could have eased the strain on his hands while still committing himself to his job full-time.
“Back when I first started to play Apex and stuff a lot and stream a lot, I didn't really do the optimal precautions for staying healthy,” he explains. “So, doing warm ups and stretches and stuff, maybe hand warm ups before playing.”
The small periods of rest between mammoth gaming sessions also compounded the issues, Shiv believes. But he notes🅰 there’s a difference between how people treat esports and physical sports, that even pro players like himself may not realise.
“People don't expect or hold these sports to the same kind of physical standard as ‘real sports’,” he says. “But, it needs to be taken as seriously, if not more [seriously than physical sports], as you’re playing for so many hours, even more than you do normal physical sports.”
He compares esports to traditional sports like tennis, football, and rugby, noting that, while the physical strain of competitive Apex is focused solely on the hands, the length of competitions and amount of time players spend practising is far greater than professionals in their physical counterparts. Players are susceptible to hand injuries due to the intense strain they put themselves under. While the same has happened in tennis before, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:ALGS match point finals꧂ regula꧙rly hit the five hour mark. It’s a lot, especially after a week of intense competition.
"It definitely weighs on your mental health." Shivam 'ShivFPS' Patel, on his injury.
When he competes, Shiv still uses his trusty keyboard and mouse. But, in order to rest his thumbs between competitions, he keeps them strapped to a splint, reduces his time spent streaming and playing, and uses an adaptive controller to play the game he loves. Alongside an 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Xbox Adaptive Controller fitte💫d with eight foot pedals that represent the face buttons on an Xbox controller, Shiv uses a Quadstick, a controller designed so that people missing limbs can play video games using their mouth. He has “massive respect” for those who need to use it to play all of their games, and in a way it seems to make him grateful for the movement he still has in his thumbs.
Shiv's Handless Setup (Left To Right, Foot Pedals, Xbox Adaptive Controller, Quadstick)
“[The Quadstick] has a single analog stick and a mouthpiece connected to it,” Shiv explains. “There's four holes on the mouthpiece which you can either sip or puff into, in multiple combinations for different inputs in-game. Connecting [the Quadstick and the Xbox Adaptive Controller] together, using both of those two pieces of equipment in tandem, that's basically how I play.”
Eve⛄ry stream, Shiv is performing a tap dance over the foot pedals beneath his desk a💖nd a simultaneous breathing exercise into the Quadstick in order to rest his thumbs. His ranked performances are yet to match those of his solo queue keyboard and mouse days, but he’s come a long way in a few short weeks. His current setup sees a triple-puff into the Quadstick engage Apex’s auto-run function, and another to turn it off, but he keeps messing with the inputs to achieve the perfect handless keybinds. It’s an impressive feat in and of itself, but his job becomes even more difficult when you consider the fact that thousands of people are tuning in to watch. Streamers thrive on engaging with their followers and live chat, something which Shiv has to do in between puffs to make his in-game character move from fight to fight.
He&rsqu♕o;s also vastly reduced his streaming schedule. He now streams for a maximum of four hours a day, and takes every weekend off to fully rest. It’s a luxury afforded to him by the countless hours he grafted in the early stages of his career, but he’s glad his fans have stood by him since making the change – “the majority are always supportive,”🍬 he says. But his injury has had a knock-on effect on his mental health. As someone who lives and breathes gaming, who wants to stream every waking moment, having to force himself offline has been tough.
“In terms of being a streamer and wanting to stream a crazy amount of time and you can't do that now, it definitely weighs on your mental health,” he explains. “I would say when you're not able to do what you want to do, [what you] love, and not even able to physically allow yourself to stream and play properly and all this kind of stuff, it can definitely affect you.”
At that moment, I understood what Shiv was about. He was 🌳born to stream. Taking breaks kills him, and his love of playing Apex for thousands of hungry fans is unmatched. It’s a testament to his skill as a streamer that he&rsqu♍o;s kept this audience through thick and thin, through injury and health, and as he’s grown from a young adult into an older, more mature person.
“I used to be really loud, ragey, and angry when I was younger,” he admits. Clips of him shooting magazines of ammunition into cheaters’ deathboxes were a staple of online Apex communities for years as he waged a solo war on the ranked queue. “But I've definitely mellowed out.”
His streams are more chilled now, and more infrequent. But the audience is still there. It proves that they’re not there for the rage clips, they’re not waiting for that moment where he snaps and launches into an anti-cheating tirade. They’re there for him. Shiv is only 25, but comes across as vꦛery mature, a word I would never hꦺave used to describe him three or four years ago. But the career of an esports athlete is often brutally short, especially so for one plagued by painful injuries. When I enquire as to whether he has a ‘Plan B’ or any ideas for what he’ll do if he’s forced to retire, Shiv has one thing on his mind.
“My plan is to keep going, to be honest with you. It's to continue as much as possible, as best as possible.”
With this mindset, this passion, and a more balanced streaming schedule that will not only rest his thumbs but also allow him time away from the screen, it’s hard to imagine Shiv ever stopping. After all, if he’s jumped this injury hurdle by learning an impossibly complex handless control ꧂system,🦹 getting older is hardly going to stop him.
