Schalke’s substitute ADC FORG1VEN is “allowed to discuss offers” to join a new team for the 2021 League of Legends season, he announced today.
After the completion of his military service in 2019, FORG1VEN remained a free agent for a year and joined S04’s roster for the 2020 season. But following poor results in the first three weeks of the 2020 LEC Spring Split, FORG1VEN tweeted that he wouldn’t be playing anymore unless changes are made to the team.
S04 made some changes, but not in FORG1VEN’s favor. They brought in ADC Nihat “Innaxe” Aliev from their academy team. With Innaxe, the team started winning more but it wasn’t enough for them to achieve anything meaningful this year beyond qualifying for the LEC playoffs in the summer.
This wasn’t the first time FORG1VEN has stepped down or been benched so early in a split, however. A previous incident happened in 2016 when the 28-year-old superstar ADC was benched by Origen for having motivational issues.
FORG1VEN was one of the best ADCs during the EU LCS era, but he fell off after 2016. His highest feat is reaching the 2016 World Championship semifinals with H2K Gaming, a team that featured three players who are still in the LEC to this day: Odoamne, Jankos, and Vander. During his time on Schalke04, he made furors alongside Gilius.
‘Gilius’ made his last professional appearance under the Vitality brand in the 2018 Spring Split but was replaced by Kikis later on. ‘We followed the development of Erberk with great interest and found that he made significant progress, especially last year. We want to build on this and further support Erberk in his development. We are convinced that he has the potential to hold his own in the LEC,’ said the Chief Gaming Officer of Schalke.
‘Forg1ven’, also known as ‘Godg1ven’, played for his last professional match at European Masters in April 2018, before having to serve a year in the Greek Army. The team completely stomped all competitors and won the finals 3-0. During his term in the Greek Army, he kept playing League of Legends, achieving Challenger in a span of a few weeks once the season started and maintained top ranking on the EUW server.
Both ‘Gilius’ and ‘Forg1ven’ are known to be outspoken individuals regarding their teammates, and fans will be eager to see if these two players can unite and focus their aggression towards their opponents on the rift.
FORG1VEN will have to compete with a lot of fresh rookies if he wants to return to the LEC. There’s so much upcoming talent from the regional EU leagues that being a veteran with a lot of experience no longer grants you an easy spot on a starting lineup in the LEC.
