Solita <3 Rocket League
Rocket League has been part of Kanaliiga’s tournament game selections for 15 seasons already. Despite the reasonably limited number of its players, Rocket League is the third most visible game in Kanaliiga - at least what can be seen by watching the broadcast hours. The reason for this is simple: Solita, a software consulting company from Tampere, has specifically sponsored Rocket League since the first tournaments of the Kanaliiga and has thus been able to achieve quite good visibility on Twitch and Kanaliiga’s social media in proportion to its number of players.
“Solita’s rocket culture goes back to the Oulu office. Rocket had already been played as a random break game before, but sometime in the spring of 2017, it started to become more regular and expanded to include playing together in the evenings. After the announcement of the first Rocket League tournament by the Kanaliiga, it was clear for a while that we had to get there and pretty soon more teams were participating and success started to come.” - Juho “Hilloh” Leinonen
Solita players’ mutual rocketball matches have rhythmed the employees’ days since 2017. During the Corona era, Taukopelit moved from the break room to online games, which also allowed offices in other cities and their employees to join in. Nowadays, lunch and afternoon games run online as private matches, so everyone who wants to can participate, regardless of location.
From the beginning, Juho “Hilloh” Leinonen has been involved in creating Solita’s close relationship with Rocket League and, through the game, also with Kanaliiga. “In a certain way, supporting Kanaliiga’s Rocket League is about taking care of our well-being at work,” he answers when asked where Solita’s passionate support for Rocket League specifically comes from. Solita’s support has enabled the Rocket League broadcasts from season to season, as well as the prizes awarded to the winning teams at the end of the season. Leinonen himself has worked at Solita since 2017 as a full-stack developer and has the current title of Senior Software Designer.
“I originally bought the game almost immediately when it was released, but I forgot about the game after about 20 hours. I came back to the game after starting it with Solita, because in a nice company the game tasted completely different. More skilled players and later the inclusion of the Kanaliiga also brought a certain kind of ambition to improve my game skills and eye. My rank revolves around Champion 1, although sometimes I have slipped to visit even the C2 side.”
In addition to Rocket League, Solita also has chicken league teams in Counter Strike 2. Other Kanaliiga games and tournaments have also been tried, although the very first Kanaliiga tournament game, PUBG Battlegrounds, has reportedly never received a team. Important matches are advertised in the workplace’s Slack, so that other coworkers can also join in cheering.
So what does Solita do as a company? In a nutshell, almost everything you can expect from a software consulting company: Solita offers software development services from design to implementation, cloud services from development to maintenance and data solutions from integrations to data science, machine learning and AI solutions. Today, Solita has also expanded beyond the borders of Finland - in addition to Finland, offices can be found in Sweden, Denmark, Estonia, Germany, Belgium, Norway, Poland and Switzerland. “We are also a very people-oriented and value-based company,” adds Leinonen.
Kanaliiga Rocket League S16 registration is open on February 3. - 16.2. The Main Series of the tournament starts on 24.2. and the finals will be played in May! You can find more information about the tournament on the Kanaliiga discord server. You can register for the season at from here!