Daryl Koh "iceiceice" Pei Xiang first surfaced in esports in 2005, juggling multiple titles including Defense of the Ancients and WarCraft 3. His repertoire only grew with time, and by 2012 he was playing Dota 2, StarCraft 2, and League of Legends at the competitive level. He notably won the Blizzard SEA Invitational and competed at the BlizzCon 2010 StarCraft II Invitational, though he was eliminated early on from the event.
His first appearance in Dota 2 came at The International 2011 when he joined Scythe Gaming as a substitute. He helped the team take third place at the event. Scythe was then sponsored by Meet Your Makers, but the team only played under that banner a few times before splitting off to form Zenith.
iceiceice continued juggling multiple esports titles during this time and posted mixed results in Dota 2. Zenith was invited to The International 2012, with the team finishing in fifth place. He continued on with Zenith from there and performed in similar fashion. A weaker ninth-place finish at The International 2013 led to the team’s disbandment after the event.
iceiceice left the Southeast Asian region after TI3 to join Chinese powerhouse Team DK. This saw iceiceice become significantly more active in Dota 2 than in years past, which was accompanied by much better results in tournaments. Though the squad stumbled in its debut, a second-place finish at MLG Championship Columbus showed that DK was a serious threat. When 2015 came, the squad surged with top placements in the 2013 WPC ACE Dota 2 League, G-League 2013, and StarLadder StarSeries Season 9.
This success earned the team a spot in The International 2014. DK was on the list of favorites to win the event, and ultimately finished fourth.
Following the event, iceiceice split from Team DK and joined TI4 runner-up Vici Gaming. This proved to be a good move, as VG consistently posted top-four placements at prominent tournaments and won StarLadder StarSeries Season 12 and The Summit 2. This earned the team a direct invitation to The International 2015, but poor performances there undermined the team as they earned another fourth-place finish.
iceiceice remained with Vici Gaming after TI5, but the team soon suffered a decline. Despite a strong showing at the Nanyang Dota 2 Championships, Vici Gaming finished in sixth at the Frankfurt Major and last at the Shanghai Major. iceiceice then transferred to EHOME, but the team posted significantly weaker results after, earning just two cash prizes during the ensuing season. Despite this, EHOME performed well enough in qualifiers to reach The International 2016 as a wildcard. Though they faced long odds, they converted this opportunity into a fifth-place finish.
After a few years in China with some of the region’s most prestigious organizations, iceiceice returned to Southeast Asia and formed a team of his own in Team Faceless. The team was very active but generally underwhelmed through the year, with its best performance being a fourth-place finish in The Manila Masters.Â
The team disbanded after failing to qualify for The International 2017. This ended iceiceice’s time as one of the handful of players to compete at every installment of The International.
With the creation of the Dota Pro Circuit, iceiceice joined an established esports organization in Mineski. The team started the season strong with a first-place finish in the PGL Open Bucharest and StarLadder i-League Invitational Season 3 minors. The team’s performance dipped precipitously from there, which was followed by a scandal involving iceiceice using a racial slur during a Twitch stream.
Mineski regularly washed out of majors early, but inexplicably took first place at the 2018 Dota 2 Asia Championships. Some early success and a victory in a major earned the team a direct invitation to The International 2018. Mineski finished in ninth place, the worst performance at The International in iceiceice’s career.
iceiceice then departed Mineski in order to join top SEA team Fnatic for the 2018-2019 Dota Pro Circuit season. Fnatic competed sparingly and posted mixed results during the year, with the highlight being a third-place finish at DreamLeague Season 11. Despite finishing last at both the MDL Disneyland Paris Major and 2019 Epicenter Major, that third-place finish at DreamLeague Season 11 was enough to earn the team a direct invitation to The International 2019. The team’s poor summer continued into TI9, where Fnatic finished 13th.
iceiceice remained with Fnatic for the 2019-2020 DPC season, which kicked off in underwhelming fashion for the squad with two ninth-place performances in the first two majors of the season. Fnatic’s fortunes turned a bit when it won DOTA Summit 12.
