The complete history of notorious Dota 2 star EternaLEnVy
Jacky “EternaLEnVy” Mao first popped up in Dota 2 in memorable fashion, making an impassioned post on the Team Liquid forums that he was dropping out of university in order to become a professional Dota 2 player. Despite the post going viral with people criticizing his decision, he was competing with a top team less than a year later.
As the support player for No Tidehunter, he found huge first-place finishes at DreamHack Winter 2012 and StarLadder StarSeries Season 5. During that time, he helped establish the team as both in terms of creative iem building and individual playmaking. As soon as the team started slipping however, EternaLEnVy was kicked from the team in order to complete the all-Swedish lineup that would eventually become Alliance.
He joined Kaipi from there, with the team finding solid success in smaller regional leagues. This led to the team being signed by Chinese organization Rattlesnake, which was later rebranded as Speed Gaming. During that time, EternaLEnVy won the biggest tournament of his career to that point in MLG Championship Columbus. After a few more months, the team split off from Speed Gaming and found a new sponsor in Cloud9.
EternaLEnVy’s continued use of creative builds and team compositions combined with the Cloud9 brand to create one of the most popular teams in the game. The team found solid success in tournaments, but EternaLEnVy consistently found himself losing to Alliance. This saw the team stumble into The International 2014, but Cloud9 posted a solid top-six performance once there.
The team initially kept its roster largely intact, but eventually made the controversial decision to release support duo Kurtis “Aui_2000” Ling and Johan “pieliedie” Åström. The team posted comparable results, but posted a disappointing result in The International 2015.
This led to the end of EternaLEnVy’s time with Cloud9 as he departed to join Team Secret.
EE leaves Cloud9, helps Team Secret to breakout year
EternaLEnVy’s move to Team Secret resulted in the greatest victories of his competitive career, with the team finding immediate success with first-place finishes at the MLG World Finals and the Nanyang Dota 2 Championships. The team took second place at the Frankfurt Major and followed this up with a first-place finish at the Shanghai Major.
During his time with Secret, EternaLEnVy took to social media to harshly criticize Ravindu “Ritsu” Kodippili of Cloud9 for colluding with other North American teams to undermine competing team Digital Chaos by sharing information from scrims. This led to applause from Dota 2 fans, as well as Ritsu’s eventual release from Cloud9.
Despite Secret’s consistent success, the team shocked the Dota 2 world by dropping mid laner Aliwi “w33” Omar and Rasmus “MISERY” Filipsen in favor of Evil Geniuses players Artour “Arteezy” Babaev and Saahil “Universe” Arora. This proved to be a disastrous decision for the team and led to significantly worse results. The team finished in last place at the Manila Major and flopped in similar fashion at The International 2016.
Why is there drama between EternaLEnVy and Puppey?
EternaLEnVy left Team Secret due to allegations of withheld prize pool earnings, bullying, and generally poor business operations on the part of Secret captain Clement “Puppey” Ivanov.
EternaLEnVy left Secret after TI6 and formed new squad Team NP alongside former teammate Aui_2000. EternaLEnVy made waves within the Dota 2 community by releasing a blog post alleging that Team Secret had withheld a significant portion of his prize pool winnings accrued with the team, and that Secret captain Puppey had bullied and mistreated his teammates. This was corroborated by multiple former members of Secret and led to a restructuring of the Team Secret organization.
Team NP failed to win any notable events, but was solid throughout the following year. Despite performing generally well, the team surprised many by releasing two players after a poor result in the 2017 Dota 2 Asia Championship. In a sign of things to come, these roster moves did not lead to greater success as the team posted similar results en route to another poor finish at The International 2017 after being sponsored by Cloud9.
The Cloud9 roster dissolved after TI, with EternaLEnVy and former C9 teammate pieliedie heading to Southeast Asia to join Fnatic. The new Fnatic roster played generally well but made a controversial move by releasing Khoo “Ohaiyo” Chong Xin in favor of Universe. This saw EternaLEnVy’s past moves come under a microscope, with Dota 2 fans criticizing him for his history of making cutthroat roster moves on teams despite those teams finding success.
EE’s Fnatic coins the term “pizza party” in Dota 2
The term “pizza party” was coined from EternaLEnVy admitting that Ohaiyo was kicked from Fnatic after a pizza party celebrating the qualification for the 2018 Bucharest Major.
Fnatic made marginal improvements with the addition of Universe, but EternalEnVy’s season concluded once again with a flop at The International.
After burning bridges with many players in Europe, North America, and in Southeast Asia, EternaLEnVy struggled to find a steady team in the 2018-2019 Dota Pro Circuit season. He initially joined compLexity Gaming, but left just three month later after the team posted poor results. From there, he competed with a number of different teams, joining South America’s Infamous and forming numerous short-lived stacks under the name “Flying Penguins.”
Each team struggled to even qualify for major events. EternaLEnVy eventually landed with Team Team, which successfully qualified for the MDL Disneyland Paris Major. A poor result at ESL One Mumbai prior to the Paris Major was followed by the release of Nico “Gunnar” Lopez. Gunnar was emotional when discussing how his family had already purchased airfare and hotel rooms in order to see him compete at the Paris Major, leading to another wave of backlash against EternalEnVy for making such a late change.
Team Team was sponsored by beastcoast ahead of the major, but when the team finished in last place and failed to qualify for both the 2019 Epicenter Major and StarLadder ImbaTV Dota 2 Minor Season 2, EternaLEnVy left the team and didn’t reemerge until after The International 2019.
EternaLEnVy settles into journeyman status
EternaLEnVy returned during the post-TI9 shuffle by reuniting with Aui_2000 to form Fighting Pepegas, which was later renamed Fighting PandaS. The team qualified for Dota 2 tournaments in the first three major cycles, but washed out early from the MDL Chengdu Major and the WePlay! Bukovel Minor.
After qualifying for the StarLadder ImbaTV Dota 2 Minor Season 3, EternaLEnVy abruptly left the team along with Jingjun “Sneyking” Wu to begin his third stint at Cloud9. This iteration of Cloud9 was a catastrophic failure. The team kicked off its existence with a 10-match losing streak and dissolved not long after without posting any results of note.
EternaLEnVy then became something of a full-time journeyman. He had a stint as a substitute for Clinton “Fear” Loomis’ business associates squad in 2020 and moved between numerous short-lived teams.
EternaLEnVy didn’t find a team for the first tour of the 2021 Dota Pro Circuit, but played as a substitute for North American division two team Byzantine Riders. He had a controversial stay in the second tour with Black N Yellow when he allegedly quit on the team early before trying to wrest away the squad’s Dota Pro Circuit slot.
He was unsuccessful in this effort and instead joined SADBOYS for the qualifiers to The International 2021, with the team being renamed bumblebEEs. The team failed to qualify for TI10, placing third in its qualifier.
EternaLEnVy made a few more appearances from there, surprisingly reuniting with Gunnar on 4 Zoomers for events ahead of TI10. He made a vague post that left his competitive future in doubt shortly after, saying he was stepping away from the game due to poor recent form while saying he wasn’t actually taking a break or retiring. In July 2022, he stated he was done with professional Dota 2 and intended to become a full-time streamer or enter the tech industry.
Steven Rondina is a true lifelong gamer. His earliest memories are of playing video games, and he has continued playing them throughout his life with no plans to stop any time soon. Steven’s favorite franchises in gaming include Pokemon, Dark Souls, and Counter-Strike. He has previously published with Bleacher Report and other gaming outlets.
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