In the first year of Rocket League esports, few players were as closely tied to the rise of competitive play as Michael “M1k3Rules” Costello. An Irish attacker with sharp reads and a loud voice in comms, he helped turn FlipSid3 Tactics into the early European superteam, carried them through a year of online dominance, and reached the Grand Final of the first Rocket League Championship Series World Championship. His stay at the top tier was brief compared to some of his teammates, but the impact he left on early European play and on the story of FlipSid3 has outlasted his results sheet.
Born on February 23, 1995, and raised in Ireland, Costello came into Rocket League from the wider console and online scene just as Psyonix’s car–soccer experiment began to attract tournaments. He was one of the first wave of players willing to treat the game as a full time competitive project, and for about a year he sat at the absolute center of its emerging esports map.
Early European Cups and the Road to Teamy Weamy
When Rocket League launched in the summer of 2015, the competitive calendar formed almost overnight. ESL cups, community weeklies, and small online invitationals gave ambitious players their first laboratory for testing lineups and styles. In that environment, Michael Costello began appearing under the handle “M1k3Rules” in European three versus three tournaments and ladders, sharpening a fast, aggressive style that paired well with the high speed, low structure meta of those first months.
One of his earliest documented stops was a short stint with Smokin Rockets in July 2015, a brief six day run that placed him on the radar but did not yet anchor him to a stable lineup. From there he moved into the project that would define his career: Teamy Weamy. Founded in July 2015 by Scottish player Mark “Markydooda” Exton, Teamy Weamy was originally a small European lineup that tested different third players before settling on a long term core. Costello joined the team on July 22, 2015, giving the roster a vocal, mechanically confident third who already showed promise in early ESL cups and community events.
Within weeks, another key piece arrived. Italian veteran Francesco “Kuxir97” Cinquemani, already known from Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket Powered Battle Cars, joined Teamy Weamy in August. Together the three players created a trio that combined Markydooda’s rotational discipline, Kuxir’s mechanical flair, and M1k3Rules’ direct, confrontational attacking style. In later interviews, Kuxir remembered that when Rocket League launched he “immediately started playing tournaments with Mark ‘Markydooda’ Exton and Michael ‘M1k3Rules’ Costello” and described their early run as a formative period that shaped his own understanding of competitive play.
Those first weeks under the Teamy Weamy banner did not yet carry a major organization’s name, but they caught the attention of one. On August 25, 2015, the U.S.-based organization FlipSid3 Tactics decided to invest in Rocket League by acquiring the entire Teamy Weamy roster. With that move, Costello became the starting third on what would quickly become the most feared team in the game.
Building FlipSid3 Tactics into the First Superteam
Once the Teamy Weamy core signed with FlipSid3 Tactics, the new roster immediately stepped into a heavier tournament schedule and a brighter spotlight. Throughout the autumn of 2015 they became the standard by which other European and North American teams measured themselves.
FlipSid3’s results in late 2015 show how quickly the lineup with M1k3Rules rose to the top. They won the MLG Pro League Season 1, one of the first international major tournaments for Rocket League, defeating Swarm Gaming in a best of seven final and taking the largest share of the early prize pool. They lifted multiple Rocket Royale titles, including Rocket Royale 2015 Week 6, where FlipSid3 beat iBUYPOWER Cosmic in a three to zero sweep, as well as a string of earlier weeks that solidified them as the most consistent winners in recurring online series.
They also captured the Gfinity Invitational in early 2016, an online European event that pitted FlipSid3 against other top European squads. Tournament pages show FlipSid3 entering under the familiar trio of Markydooda, M1k3Rules, and Kuxir, and the brackets reflect what regular viewers already knew by that time. In Europe, they were the team to beat.
Behind those results was a playing style and team environment that early commentators still reference when they talk about the first RLCS era. In streams and recorded content from the era, fans could hear FlipSid3’s in game communication on player mics. While Kuxir stayed mostly silent to focus on mechanics, the audio was filled with the banter and quick calls of Markydooda and M1k3Rules. That combination of loose, joking chatter and serious mechanical skill became part of the early Rocket League esports identity, and it made their matches must watch viewing long before there were franchise leagues or six figure prize pools.
By the time Psyonix announced the Rocket League Championship Series in early 2016, FlipSid3 entered the new official circuit as clear favorites in Europe. They had already won major community leagues and weekly series, and they did so while playing an uptempo style that seemed a step ahead of most of their opponents.
RLCS Season 1: Favorites, Heartbreak, and a Final Farewell
When RLCS Season 1 began, the European side of the bracket largely confirmed what fans expected. FlipSid3 with M1k3Rules topped the region in online play, piling up league points and taking first place in key European RLCS events. In the Season 1 European group stages and online finals they consistently finished near or at the top, earning Europe’s number two seed behind Northern Gaming for the first ever World Championship in Los Angeles.
Official write ups from Psyonix and community coverage framed FlipSid3 as the favorites on arrival. They had more tournament wins than any other roster, the best known trio, and arguably three of the strongest individual players in the game. The expectation was simple. If anyone was going to hoist the first RLCS trophy, it should be the green and black of FlipSid3.
What most viewers did not know at the time was that behind the scenes, the Los Angeles trip would also be a turning point for Costello. In a later feature on FlipSid3’s story, writers reported that he was dealing with personal problems and that he had already told his teammates he would have to leave the roster after the tournament in order to handle them. That decision meant the RLCS World Championship would be his last event with FlipSid3, and it added an emotional layer to a run that was already carrying the weight of expectations.
The actual tournament did not start the way the bracket suggested it should. In the opening round, FlipSid3 were upset by North American underdogs iBUYPOWER Cosmic in a back and forth best of five, a result that immediately pushed the European favorites into the lower bracket. Official RLCS recaps and later features have described what happened next as one of the most savage lower bracket runs in early Rocket League history. With elimination hanging over them in every series, FlipSid3 with M1k3Rules tore through the lower bracket, knocking out opponents until they reached the Grand Final and earned a rematch with iBUYPOWER.
The story stopped one series short of the perfect ending. In the best of seven Grand Final, iBUYPOWER again outplayed FlipSid3 and won the series four games to two. Coverage from the time notes that the result left FlipSid3 “with empty hands” despite a heroic run, and in his own retrospective interview years later, Kuxir said that the first RLCS was “extremely heartbreaking” because he wanted to win the trophy with Mike before he left the pro scene. He called it their last tournament together and said that he believed they could have made it back to the finals again if Costello had been able to stay.
That Grand Final appearance remains the centerpiece of M1k3Rules’ competitive legacy. He entered the World Championship as the starting third for the consensus best team in the world, nearly lifted the first ever RLCS trophy, and then stepped away from the top tier at the very moment the scene moved into its next stage.
Leaving FlipSid3 Tactics and Short Returns to Competition
After the RLCS Season 1 World Championship, Costello followed through on the decision he had communicated to his teammates. He left FlipSid3 Tactics, opening a spot that the organization later filled with Norwegian player Marius “gReazymeister” Ranheim. FlipSid3’s new lineup would go on to win RLCS Season 2 and secure the world title that had slipped away in Los Angeles, but by that time their original third was no longer in the lineup.
For Costello, the period after FlipSid3 was defined by shorter stints and attempted comebacks rather than another long stay with a major organization. Public team histories show that he spent a period away from professional play before returning at the end of 2016 with Renegades’ European Rocket League squad. That team formed in December 2016 with a roster including M1k3Rules, Rymel “mye_bipod_4shor” Hanson, and Joni “JHZER” Humaloja, but it disbanded in early February 2017 without recording major results.
In February 2017, Costello joined another European project, Velocitas. Tournament records and esports wikis list Velocitas as a lineup built around M1k3Rules, ELMP, and PauliePaulNL, with mye_bipod_4shor as a substitute. The team entered RLCS Season 3 European open qualifiers and Gfinity cups, and tournament records show Velocitas finishing in the 17th to 24th range in the RLCS Season 3 European qualifier despite being seeded low. The run showed that Costello could still drive a new roster into contention, but the team never converted that into an RLRS or RLCS league place, and Velocitas broke apart after only a few weeks.
A year later he made one more structured push. In February 2018, he formed Dilettantes alongside players Zapphire2k and mye_bipod_4shor. Liquipedia’s team history notes that Dilettantes was explicitly created for RLCS Season 5 competition, and the roster appears in the European Rival Series Play in bracket. They ultimately fell short of securing a long term spot in the Rival Series. Dilettantes disbanded in August 2018, closing the book on Costello’s attempts to re establish himself as a regular in the official league structure.
Taken together, those post FlipSid3 chapters in Renegades EU, Velocitas, and Dilettantes underline how early his true peak arrived. While many of his RLCS Season 1 contemporaries extended their careers deep into later seasons, he spent roughly a single year at the absolute top of the competitive pyramid and then became a recurring challenger on the outside of the league, rather than a constant figure inside it.
Retirement Announcements, Streaming, and a Quiet Return
As his time on structured teams wound down, M1k3Rules shifted more heavily into streaming and content creation. Sites that track Twitch streamers list his channel under his in game name, note his Irish background, and identify him as a former FlipSid3 Tactics and Dilettantes player. Viewer discussions from those years often remember him as both a high level player and a sharp on stream personality who brought the same vocal energy from his FlipSid3 comms into a more relaxed content setting.
At several points he appeared ready to step away entirely. In 2017 and 2018, community threads circulated links to videos titled along the lines of “Mik3rules says farewell to competitive RL and streaming,” where he spoke about his decision to leave the professional grind. In 2020, another widely shared post summarized a tweet stating that he had sold his PC and was “done streaming and playing Rocket League,” reinforcing the sense that the brief era of FlipSid3’s original third was fully in the past.
Even those declarations have not been entirely final. As of early 2026, statistics pages and Twitch’s own public profile show M1k3Rules again streaming Rocket League content. His channel description now introduces him as an “Ex Rocket League pro player and major finalist with FlipSid3 Tactics,” and tracking sites record recent Rocket League broadcasts with thousands of hours watched. Esports databases continue to list his game of choice as Rocket League and note that he is presently unattached to any professional roster, emphasizing his role as a veteran content creator rather than an active competitor.
In total, esports earnings sites estimate that Costello earned a little over eight thousand dollars in prize money across forty three tournaments, a reminder of how small the early Rocket League economy was even for players competing at the highest level. Most of his impact came not in life changing paydays, but in shaping the look and feel of the game when its professional scene was still just beginning.
Legacy in the Esports Historian Context
Within an Esports Legacy Profile framework, Michael “M1k3Rules” Costello represents a particular type of early era figure. His competitive prime was short and his later results were modest, yet his influence is stamped on the history of Rocket League in ways that statistics alone cannot show.
First, he helped build the original FlipSid3 Tactics trio that defined early high level play. Without the Teamy Weamy core of Markydooda, Kuxir, and M1k3Rules, there is no early international superteam with a green and black logo, no MLG Pro League title for FlipSid3, and no stacked tournament resume heading into RLCS Season 1. Features on FlipSid3’s history explicitly credit the signing of that roster, completed by Costello, as the move that marked the organization’s name in esports history.
Second, he was central to the narrative of the first RLCS World Championship. As a top European seed, runner up in Los Angeles, and a player whose announced departure gave extra emotional weight to the event, he stood at the intersection of dominance and heartbreak that turned that first LAN into something larger than a single trophy. When Kuxir later reflected on Season 1, he did not just talk about his own disappointment. He stressed that he wanted to win so Mike could leave the pro scene with a world title and called it their last tournament together.
Third, he left a kind of intangible imprint on how early Rocket League looked and sounded. Analysts have recalled that in the early era, fans could hear the F3 comms where M1k3Rules and Markydooda joked and called plays while Kuxir stayed mostly silent. That balance between banter and ruthless efficiency became part of the game’s early identity, and it made the trio feel human even as they were dismantling opponents.
Finally, his story illustrates how thin the margins were in the first years of Rocket League esports. One year of extraordinary form, a single heartbreaking Grand Final, and then a necessary departure for personal reasons were enough to shift him from centerpiece of the scene to a name recalled mostly by long time fans and analysts. Some later features on the three year anniversary of RLCS have grouped him with other early stars who had “a few good seasons and then flamed out,” but this framing risks overlooking how foundational that short prime really was.
Today, when viewers tune into his Twitch channel and see the title “Ex Rocket League pro player and major finalist with FlipSid3 Tactics,” they are seeing a compressed summary of that foundational year. In the broader tapestry of Rocket League history, Michael “M1k3Rules” Costello stands as the original third man of one of the game’s first great teams, a player whose contribution was concentrated in a brief, brilliant stretch when everything in the scene was new and the story of RLCS had only just begun.