LCS veteran Eugene “Pobelter” Park shocked the League of Legends community earlier today when he announced he wouldn’t be competing in the 2020 LCS Spring Split.
Pobelter was most recently part of FlyQuest, who saw their performance worsen throughout the Summer Split last season. Before signing with the underdog team, Pobelter was Team Liquid’s starting mid laner. That run gained him a lot of fans, since Liquid won both the 2018 spring and summer playoffs that year.
Now, Pobelter has found himself without a team. He won’t be competing in the LCS for the first time since Season 4.
In a TwitLonger, Pobelter described how emotional this has made him. At first, he was shocked at his situation. He felt disbelief that no team in the LCS had picked him up despite choosing players he felt were “so much worse” than himself. This soon led to frustration, and Pobelter admitted he wasn’t sure he could watch LCS from the sidelines. Then, he was ultimately filled with sadness at the realization that nobody wanted him.
“And I was very angry as well, both at myself for not playing better last year, and also at the teams who – in my humble opinion – are just making baffling decisions and signing random imports, washed up players, players who don’t work hard and are just playing for a paycheck in North America,” Pobelter said.
On Reddit, this portion of his rant gained a lot of applause. Many echoed his sentiments, stating that it was “about time” someone within the scene said it. One commenter even said that billionaire investor Mark Cuban was right to say that investing in North American esports teams was an awful business. In general, the concensus was that the region was failing its own players by seemingly focusing overly much on imports.
Pobelter discusses imports and frustration with the LCS
The veteran revealed that a couple of teams had shown interest in him, but just ended up being “unresponsive” the next day. Some even cut communication without any further explanation. At this point, Pobelter stated that he had been willing to take a pay cut just to be able to continue playing.
“I thought I could expect a little bit more given my history of success within NA at least, but there was nothing,” he said.
Even though the realization that he may not be playing in the LCS has left Pobelter very frustrated, he also still feels confident in his abilities. He went on to say that he still believes he’s one of the best players, despite “mainstream opinion” being that he isn’t good enough to perform internationally. In fact, Pobelter felt he hadn’t even reached his full potential yet, despite playing “so fucking good” all of Summer 2017 and 2018.
“I’m still just as motivated as the first day I played on the LCS stage and willing to put in 12-plus hours a day practicing,” he continued.
Pobelter reflected on his recent performances and came to the conclusion that he played great throughout 2018, but performed poorly at that year’s Mid-Season Invitational. Still, he felt he learned a lot from the experience. He was also confident in his 2019 performance, stating that a lot of FlyQuest’s wins were “from me hard carrying on Lissandra or Zoe.” Of course, there were moments where Pobelter felt he didn’t play up to his own standards, but he noted that a bad split or bad tournament shouldn’t spell the end for him.
“It will only be the end if I give up because of those failures. But from every failure, there is sincerely a chance to self-reflect, learn, and to grow. I never once got the feeling when playing on stage or in scrims, ‘this player or this team is just on another level that I can never attain.’ Until I feel that way, I refuse to give up,” Pobelter said.
For now, Pobelter stated that he is working on his “future plans.” He is hoping that a team will want him for the Summer Split, if not sooner. Either way, he will be “closely involved” with the competitive scene.
