The man that defined what it meant to be an elite marksman in Europe for multiple years. The one who essentially made every bottom lane he participated in a 2v3, as he commanded attention from the enemy team for fear of establishing his dominance over his counterparts. Europe’s prodigal son, a godlike talent and impressive career besmirched by attitude issues and conscription commitments. The narrative practically writes itself for Konstantinos-Napoleon “Forg1ven” Tzortziou, who finally made his return to the competitive stage after an extended time away from top-level League of Legends play.

But merely three weeks after his tumultuous re-introduction, Forg1ven burned every bridge imaginable. With his teammates, with his organization, with his fanbase – what few were left in his corner after controversy after controversy. After they took a gamble on him, Forg1ven made demands of a struggling FC Schalke 04 that the established sports brand simply could not meet. From an outside perspective, this is because said demands were unreasonable – but for Forg1ven, this was simply unacceptable. As such, he left the team before the League European Championship’s schedule had even reached the halfway mark.

The departure

In what has already become an infamous Twitch chat copypasta, Forg1ven left S04 hanging out to dry seemingly in a spur of the moment decision.

“In my 7+ [year] LoL career I always played to win and be competitive,” stated the veteran marksman. “As of now at least, [the] current roster doesn’t fit this principle.”

The throwing of his teammates under the bus aside, credit to the organization for standing by whichever individuals Forg1ven seemingly had issues with.

“Schalke is unable/unwilling to make changes to fit that goal, so we mutually agreed that I step down until and if they are willing to do so.”

Even so, it’s hard to find all of the blame landing squarely on the Greek AD carry’s shoulders. S04 had lost all of their previous games leading up to Week 4, and the changes that they had already implemented – bringing in rookie Lukas “Lurox” Thoma over Forg1ven’s fellow controversial veteran Berk “Gilius” Demir – seemed to only add fuel to the dumpster fire that was S04’s 2020 Spring Split.

Forg1ven himself was not entirely faultless, however – his individual play could also have done with a significant amount of improvement. For example, the Season 10 marksman meta includes the likes of new champions, Senna and Aphelios, alongside old pocket pick, Miss Fortune. Not shying away from the former – though looking shaky on Senna at times – Forg1ven completely neglected to add Aphelios to his champion pool, forcing a ban on the power pick from his team.

In the rare game he did play Miss Fortune, Forg1ven would level up his skills in an inopportune and inefficient manner, to say nothing of how unconventional it was. This was symptomatic of his past experiences, such as when Kalista was without a doubt the best marksman in the game during Season 5 but Forg1ven refused to play her.

FC Schalke 0-6

Both Lurox and Gilius suffered from overextension and overcommitment in S04, often diving into the enemy backline haphazardly and leaving the rest of their team to get destroyed, including Forg1ven. This frustrating formula was how most of S04’s teamfights played out, though their early game wasn’t exactly stellar either.

I myself erroneously rode the train of thinking that top three Spring 2019 support Han “Dreams” Min-kook alongside Forg1ven would make for Europe’s next best botlane, but the Korean powerhouse could never get on the same page as his marksman and their lane dominance was inconsistent at best.

Jungle and support were issues that Forg1ven and S04 themselves presumably needed addressing, but the biggest of all the elephants in the room came from the sololanes. Andrei “Odoamne” Pascu’s career has been entering a renaissance, with the veteran toplaner (who once played alongside Forg1ven all the way to the 2016 Worlds semi-finals) looking easily like S04’s best player and the only one to be remotely close to featuring in the top half of players in his role within the league.

Felix “Abbedagge” Braun, on the other hand, couldn’t be any more different. The near-rookie midlaner could go from on-point and hard smurfing one moment to choking out in a clutch teamfight the next. During S04’s dry run, it was largely the latter – Abbedagge himself falling short in key moments and enemy teams taking full advantage of that. Factor in that Abbedagge’s emotional tilt was probably added upon by Forg1ven’s expectations and the high standard of play that he is notorious for holding both himself and his teammates to, and you have a recipe for disaster just waiting to happen.

Myself, and the community at large, cannot excuse a player leaving halfway through a split just because he was dissatisfied with management decisions in regard to the roster. S04 took a chance on Forg1ven that no other team was willing to do, and yet he proved all of his detractors and denigrators correct by publicly burning down whatever fragile state S04’s house of cards mental game was after their losing streak.

Improvements across the board

When Forg1ven left, Redditors were quick to jump in with theories that S04 were in fact better off without the former Emperor of Botlane Kingdom as a part of their roster. Even so, his last minute replacement with borderline rookie Nihat “Innaxe” Aliev wasn’t promising, to say the very least. S04 lost both their wow factor and a star player overnight… or so we thought.

An expected loss against Rogue was nonetheless closer than any of S04’s earlier games, but S04 2.0’s real time to shine was against Kings of Europe G2 Esports. The first placed team versus the last placed team should’ve been a clean sweep from the get go, and it was… in favor of S04.

A huge upset from the boys in blue really did add credence to the line of thought that perhaps Forg1ven’s constant drive to win wasn’t necessarily a positive aspect in this line-up. It’s a fantastic mentality to have when surrounded by four other individuals who would do anything – absolutely anything – to succeed, but the line between determination and toxicity is a thin one that Forg1ven had overstepped far too many times in his career.

Look at Copenhagen Wolves, wherein two-fifths of the roster refused to play with Forg1ven again after one split, despite replacing him with a downgrade on paper. SK Gaming, despite being a championship contender, replaced the marksman after a single split. Even H2k Gaming – the team that Forg1ven, Odoamne, and key components of G2 Esports and Rogue led to a Worlds semi-finals finish – attempted to oust the AD for what was at best a sidegrade.

Forg1ven’s career was a sad one from an outside perspective, given that the marksman has so much talent but seemingly had so many other factors getting in the way of it. This was his last chance to show that he was able to make it on the big stage, and his exit manifesto from S04 may as well be a notice of retirement.