The following is an elaborated discussion between myself and Locodoco on his recent ‘2020 LCS Roster Moves’ video.

It’s that time of year again. The League of Legends off-season is a wondrous time filled with hope from League fans dreaming their team will sign a huge name that makes them a title contender. The preseason to this player swap bonanza is the host of rumors that flood the scene in the weeks leading up to contract expiration date.

Former LCS coach and current co-host of several League of Legends talk shows Locodoco recently uploaded his own video talking about some of the spiciest rumors we have thus far. I recommend you go and watch his video to get the full context. In that video he addressed a rumor that was broken by Travis Gafford on his talk show ‘Hotline League’ where LCS 2019 Summer MVP Svenskeren is being offered by Cloud9 to interested parties.

This would mark the third year in a row that the best player on Cloud9 was to leave the team in the off-season. The point made in Locodoco’s video is that Cloud9 is deliberately turning these players into stars and then selling them to other teams when they are at their peak. He cites past departures like Impact, Contractz, Smoothie, and Jensen as players who were “sold” in their prime.

The following is our conversation about that topic:

As you can see, Loco defended his position with facts and substantially backed it up beyond what he merely thinks is going on at Cloud9. I however would like to take it a step further and go over the exact scenario surrounding each players departure.

Impact:

At the time of Impact’s departure this move looked like it would end Cloud9’s chances of competing for a title. This is when C9 famously “lost the off-season.” Impact had been considered one of if not the best top-laner in the region during year and a half he was on the team. Without his performance its hard to imagine Cloud9 even making Worlds.

In the 2016 playoffs Impact’s unbelievable performance against Huni and Reignover in C9’s semi-final series against Immortals allow them to make the final and subsequently win the gauntlet series that followed. At 2016 and 2017 Worlds its hard to say that any other member played better than Impact. The drafts had Impact as the clear carry and focus of many games, and his Singed pick against Team WE in the 2017 quarterfinals was THE reason Cloud9 even had a chance at top 4.

There are some key things to note when the 2017 off-season came around.

1. During the 2017 season Impact had been splitting stage time with the more carry-oriented Ray.

2. Impact became a North American resident; freeing up an extra import slot

3. Immortals was kicked from the LCS and Doublelift was released by TSM

For a moment, consider these factors from Impact’s perspective. You are highlighted as the best player on your team, Team Liquid is signing the IMT core and Doublelift, you just became an NA resident and can get a massive payday. Asking to be traded in this situation looks like you can get the best of both worlds.

Impact could get paid more on Liquid and have a better chance to compete for a title. There is also the fact that earlier in the year Impact was the only player who did sign a contract extension with Cloud9. Perhaps he was already thinking about leaving the team after C9 failed to win the Spring title and he was forced to split playtime with Ray.

Contractz:

This is perhaps the strangest departure of the bunch. Contractz had already signed a three-year extension earlier in the year and abruptly decided he wanted to explore other offers. What makes it even stranger is he did not land on another top team. He went to an expansion team in Golden Guardians. Here is a nice Reddit thread that summarizes most of the situation link

Another thing to note would be Contractz’s twit longer he posted about the situation. Here are the key details to note from that post.

I’ve always struggled with this (communication) ever since I started to play competitively. I’ve always thought to myself, unless I work on this I won’t be able to level up as a player and I felt if I was on C9 I don’t think I can level up as much as I want to in this aspect of play.

I have a period in my contract where I can explore free agency, two weeks every offseason, with C9 having the right to match any offer

However, after going through the contract I changed my mind right after, and as the free agency period opened up I wanted to explore my options

We both explored options for the next three days, with no contact between us, and after 3 days Jack called and said he had signed a new jungler and had traded me to GGS, the only team that had expressed interest in me to him

link: GusoGamer Article:https://www.gosugamers.net/lol/reddit/46183-contractz-twitlonger-on-why-he-left-cloud9-and-updates-on-his-situation

From these excerpts it is easy to come to two very different conclusions: Cloud9 forced him to look for other offers so they could pick up Svenskeren, or Contractz really did want to leave.

To give credence to the first theory, it is not unheard of for a player to publicly lie about the reasons they leave a team. The most recent example of this would be the TSM jungle controversy with Akkadian. Changing your mind at the last minute seems like a big cop-out of an excuse and might just be Jack and Contractz trying to keep his reputation as a player on the positive side.

The second possibility is to totally believe Contractz that he wanted to explore other team options. It is important to note that Contractz did not leave Cloud9 to specifically join Golden Guardians. He claims he spoke to multiple teams and Jack did as well. Golden Guardians just happened to be the only team interested.

The most likely situation I can see is that Contractz saw this specific offseason as a golden opportunity. The 2017–18 off-season is the single greatest shake-up the NA scene has ever experienced. No off-season saw more big-name talent be traded between teams before or since. Contractz probably saw that his team was on the decline and thought if he made it known he was available a big team like Liquid or TSM might make him an offer. Worst case scenario he stays on Cloud9 or he gets signed to a different team for more money where he can work on his individual skills.

From this point it is up to you to choose which scenario you believe is more likely. Did Contractz open himself up to a better offer? Or did Jack, an owner known for being fair and having his players interests before his own, tell him to hit the road so they could pick up Svenskeren? Which one seems more likely? In either case this player’s departure, whatever it has to do with, seems to have very little to do with money.

Smoothie:

Smoothie’s departure is the easiest to explain. We all know the famous start to that 2018 Summer season where the starting core of Sneaky, Jensen, and Smoothie were benched in favor of the Academy players. The key thing to note here is that Licorice and Svenskeren who had started in Spring were not removed. Reapered was clearly trying to see what worked with these new players as compared to the older roster.

After consistent roster swaps, the coaching staff concluded that the team environment was better without Smoothie. At the time it was explained that Smoothie, despite his mechanical talent and experience, was not a good fit for the team because he dominated too much of the communication aspect. We really do not know anything beyond this explanation. Perhaps Smoothie was talking so much that other players were not able to give valuable input (Why Contractz said he could never improve his communication skills while on C9). Perhaps Smoothie was too susceptible to tilting, combined with his importance in the shot-calling role would too often cause the team’s communication to short circuit. Perhaps Blaber and Zeyzal just worked better together.

We do not know the 100% reason that Smoothie was pulled from the starting lineup in what was seemingly his prime. What we do know is that Jack understood Smoothie was good enough to be a starting Support and allowed a transfer to Echo Fox mid-season; a team that at the time was struggling with its support position.

Did Jack make money off this deal? Of course. It would be hard to imagine that any owner would not make money off trading a top three support player to a team struggling with their own mid-split. It seemed to be widely understood that Smoothie’s departure from Cloud9 had far more to do with making the team better than trying to turn a profit.

Jensen:

We finally come to the most controversial departure out of the bunch. When Jensen’s departure was announced, Cloud9’s official page stated that both Jensen and the organization had mutually agreed to part ways. However, anyone who has been in any sort of relationship knows there is no such thing. So who chose to break it off, C9 or Jensen?

Reapered and Cloud9 would have you leaning towards the side that they allowed him to be released because they felt they could do as well, if not better, with a different player who fit their play style better. This seems so clearly untrue. Jensen’s comments on the situation shed light to the idea that he requested to leave the team.

“This was our best chance of going the distance”

“I couldn’t avoid thinking that we just weren’t good enough”

“Even if I had made a bigger impact, perhaps the score would have been the same”

“it just seemed like it wasn’t enough, and there was this itching feeling that I needed a change”

“When I say that “we never really stood a chance”, it isn’t rooted in self doubt, but a realization of where and how we fell short”

These comments in and of themselves give you a pretty good idea that Jensen came to the realization C9 needed to either level up its roster, or Jensen would leave. Saying this was the team’s best chance and if he had made a bigger impact, they still would have lost 3–0. Also keep in mind when a player often writes down their feelings in this way they use a softer tone than what they actually think so as not to create animosity between themselves and their former teammates/organization.

There is also this large section where Jensen details that he made a series of demands to Jack that he wanted to see from Cloud9.

“After things settled down, I talked to Jack about the team and our future. There were some things that I wanted to change and some issues within the team I wanted to remedy. I have to admit that, in a way, it was a bit unreasonable of me to make those demands, since Cloud 9 was undergoing a cultural shift that I didn’t entirely believe in. All these things had been on my mind since we lost in the Summer Split finals. I have never won an NA LCS title, and that loss affected me more than I expected. I can’t even remember how many finals I’ve been to at this point, but it’s been too many without winning. I felt like I was stagnating, running in place. Even though we achieved an historic feat at Worlds, it only solidified Cloud 9’s decision to head in a direction that didn’t agree with mine. It just made sense for me to look elsewhere and the solution became obvious: for me to really thrive, I needed a change in environment.” Link

This may sound like Jensen was being a bit of diva demanding that Jack trade several players he wanted to play with. However, think of how many times he entered a finals only to have his teammates consistently lose lane. How many times despite how good he was individually his teammates were holding him back. I imagine some of the demands he requested would be the pick up a big-name AD carry to compete with the likes of Doublelift.

No matter what his demands were Jensen states that there was also a culture shift occurring at Cloud9 he did not agree with. This is a clear allusion to the fact that he spent the majority of the Summer regular season on the bench. This combined with the organization’s unwillingness to get bigger names on the team lead to Jensen requesting to leave the team. You can still say that it was “mutual” after Jensen’s conversation with Jack; however, I wouldn’t call an ultimatum a mutual agreement.

As you can see, despite Locodoco’s theory that Cloud9 is in the business of flipping players for profit like some HGTV show, there has been a unique situation surrounding each and every player’s departure from the organization.

These recent rumors of Svenskeren’s time at Cloud9 coming to a close may pan out to be true as well, I never claimed that they were not. However, I can imagine a situation in which that is explained. For one thing it seems like Cloud9 will be giving Deftly more stage time in 2020. This combined with Blaber being on the team and Zeyzal stating in a Worlds interview:

“We don’t feel there is any difference in our chances of winning with Blaber or Svenskeren in”

Indicating the team may be moving in the direction of young North American talents who have synergy built up from their time on EUnited. It seems unlikely Cloud9 can or should keep both Svenskeren and Blaber. While I and other disagree with Svenskeren being the one to trade, especially since he becomes an NA resident in 2020, Reapared has shown a preference for younger players that he can mold; rather than veterans who are more or less set in their ways. The substitutions of Ray, GoldenGlue, Blaber, and others other the years clearly display this attitude.

The fact Cloud9 has made money on each of these players is a side effect of Cloud9 and Jack being smart businessmen. In three out of the four players mentioned you can argue that C9 did not want them to leave in the first place. Jensen and Impact went to Team Liquid who are famous for overpaying their players. Reignover was made the highest paid western player in 2017 when Liquid acquired him. Jack and Cloud9 perhaps could not offer as much or were unwilling to pay as much money as Liquid were willing to in order to keep these players.

But I guess you’d have to lack critical thinking in order to not see these factors. You’d probably have to be the kind of person that would pick Gigabyte Marines to finish ahead of Splyce in their group without watching a single GAM game. That wouldn’t just be crazy, that’d be loco.