Most fighting game stories start with players who have been part of a community from a very young age. That isn’t exactly the case for Erik “Retus” Schindler, the battery who supercharges Saltmine League—one of Europe’s biggest weekly tournaments.
At almost 40 years old, Retus didn’t get his start with fighting games. While he did play Street Fighter II as a kid, his push into competitive gaming came from playing games like Command & Conquer, where he was a top 20 player in the world during its Red Alert expansion, and helping maintain a top European guild in World of Warcraft.
In the end, he found his way back to the streets through Twitch.
During the Street Fighter IV days, he started watching streamers and tournaments on Twitch, despite not playing the game himself because he didn’t particularly enjoy it. That all changed in 2016 when SFV dropped and caught his attention.
“I didn’t actually touch Street Fighter or any fighting game really until Street Fighter V,” Retus said. “I checked it out, bought the game, and was like ‘Hey, this is really cool!’ I just played. I wasn’t even part of the [Fighting Game Community] back then.”
For almost a year, Retus played on his own, grinding without any real contact with other players. In his own words, he was a “low-rank masher pressing buttons and having fun.” With his background in other competitive titles, however, he eventually decided to see what community existed for the game in Germany, and thus, entered the Saltmine.
According to Retus, Saltmine’s origin story is a mystery even to him, citing that he knows it started at some point during the SFIV era through a WhatsApp group and nothing more.
When he joined up during SFV, he found it was mostly just a tournament for the German Street Fighter community with no real plan to become anything more than that. Since he had experience running events, the Saltmine team eventually asked him to help out.
The rest is a story of slow but consistent evolution. Over time, Retus took on more responsibility within the Saltmine team. Different people came and went until one of the final senior members decided to step away and asked him to take over the brand.
“At some point, every time I get into a game, I play but end up in a leadership role,” Retus laughed. “Back in the day when we organized Command & Conquer events, like 200 people brought their PCs to one place. I don’t have a lot of stress running fighting game tournaments because of that and how we have handled things and evolved [at Saltmine].”
After he took over in 2018, Retus and his team reworked things from scratch, starting what would eventually become the current iteration of the Saltmine League. It functions as a set of 12 weekly tournaments culminating in a final event featuring the top eight players from across the season.
At first, it was just some rule and format adjustments, with Retus streaming matches from his personal setup with German commentary. It held the simple goal of helping German players improve by having a consistent place to compete. As time went on, more and more people reached out to the team, asking if the event was just for German players or if there was a way they could enter it too.
After the final German-only season ended in April 2019, Saltmine League opened its doors to all challengers in Europe, expanding the team’s goal of helping German players to now help put Europe’s top talent on the map.
“My personal goal was and always will be helping the German players. But the team is always watching competitive Street Fighter and we saw the way Europe was getting less attention than it deserves,” Retus noted. “So part of why we changed was because we wanted to show people how strong Europe is and give the players a place to come and train with a very competitive format. We said, ‘Let's not do it only for Germany, but let's try to get Europe on the map.’”
Since opening up to Europe, Saltmine League has done just that. In-season events for the league have averaged over 100 participants since the release of Street Fighter 6 and featured stacked lineups comparable to regional Capcom Pro Tour tournaments while still happening weekly.
Even at that size, Saltmine League runs a tight ship. On the production side, Retus usually runs these 100-person tournaments with a single bracket runner, two commentators, and himself, with maybe one additional person helping out as needed.
The team trusts the players to report their scores and keep things running smoothly because everyone on both sides wants things to go well. Saltmine is a way for them to improve every week and has become a surrogate local tournament for people who might not have access to one in their area.
“These players support us and we support them. And I think that is very cool,” Retus said. “If you have a local, you should go and support your TOs. But not everybody has the luxury of an offline local. It doesn’t matter if it is online or offline. Just go, help out the TO, and you will learn something or get to connect with other people. Maybe you’ll find a friend for life.”
As Retus said, it’s not all about competition. The Saltmine team believes tournaments are also about talking to people, finding friends to hang out with, and just having fun. Somewhat selfishly, Retus admits he also just wants more people because he wants to watch fun matches. “I love watching games, and more people means it is more exciting for me, the team, and for the viewers!”
With consistent registration from players like Nathan "Mister Crimson" Massol, EndingWalker, and Evo 2018 Champion Benjamin "Problem X" Simon, Saltmine is a mix of everyone from top-level pros to players just getting started, all trying to get better over time. All of that has been made possible because of improvements in online play and communication between players.
“A lot of players in these parts have actually started at online events and then end up going to their first offline events much later,” Retus said. “That is really how players like EndingWalker started for example, and that’s really cool for me to see. I’m doing this because I think online is actually a great way to bring more people into going offline, which should be the goal. I want to see them at Capcom Cup, or wherever in any game.”
Europe will have another chance to take center stage when Evo France brings the event series global in Nice from October 10 to 12. For Retus and the Saltmine team, it proves that Europe is where they think it should be—that the hard work of so many people across the region is being acknowledged.
“Everybody wants to compete, or even better, win an Evo event. I hope a lot of international players from all around the globe will go there [to Evo France], not just the Europeans,” Retus said. “We will have people there no one knows about and they can beat everybody. We should be recognized. I want everyone to show up and come to Europe to see how good our scene actually is, and then get beat up by the Europeans [laughs].”
Despite Retus feeling like he and his team have helped “get Europe on the map,” he has no plans to slow down with Saltmine League or his other responsibilities.
For the Capcom Pro Tour 2024, Retus worked with Capcom and his team to run four different regions in the World Warrior circuit—the most of any tournament organizer. In addition, heading into Capcom Cup 11, Saltmine is once again sponsoring Cem "GGHalibel" Ceken as he represents Germany in Tokyo from March 5 to 8, where Retus will be in attendance with his 71-year-old mother.
“She doesn’t speak English at all and knows nothing about the game, but she likes watching it so I told her ‘I am going to Japan, do you want to come?’ and now we are going together,” Retus said. Once he is done with a fighting game-filled vacation, his sights are set on making sure the Saltmine League continues to help players across Europe thrive.
Throughout 2024, Retus traveled to events like Evo, Ultimate Fighting Arena, and more, helping run brackets or simply enjoying the tournaments, a pattern he wants to continue moving forward. For Saltmine League, the focus is on remaining a high-quality competitive proving ground and potentially expanding with a second game.
During the Street Fighter V era, Saltmine League did host Guilty Gear Strive brackets for three seasons. Unfortunately, that ended in July 2022 after the team ran into continuous issues with hackers targeting the league’s lobbies. Retus did mention that 2XKO could be a potential target when it launches, but the Saltmine team is still planning out how it wants to expand.
“We are thinking about changing and bringing in a second game,” Retus shared. “We’re not sure which one we want to add yet, but for everything else, we just want to keep going. We currently have the highest average sign-up numbers we’ve ever had, so it’s going strong. I’m very happy, and we can keep growing more together every single week.”