Liquid and Clarity Gaming bid farewell to their Zergs Zenio and KiLLeR. The former will go into retirement while the latter will switch to League of Legends.
Zenio leaves Liquid after spending two years with the team. The Korean Zerg joined the blue-shirted squad in November 2011 at which point he was a regular Code S competitor. As part of Liquid, Zenio continued to perform well in Korea but also made a few international appearances that brough him a fourth place finish from IEM Kiev '12, top eight at IEM WC '12 and another top eight at IEM Singapore the same year.
Though he enjoyed a relatively successful 2012, 2013 was a whole other matter for Zenio. He tasted elimination from Code A in the first days of the year and never crawled back into WCS Korea, thus staying off the radar. He made brief appearances at DreamHack Stockholm and HSC VIII but both of those were Ro32 eliminations.
According to TL CEO Victor "Nazgul" Goosens, it is that lack of results that forced Zenio to first disappear from the public eye in order to practice and then retire altogether when practice yielded no results.
"Zenio was a player who told me he could be as good as anybody at being a showman. But before any of that, he was first a proud competitor and hard worker. He wanted to be recognized for his skill over anything else, and throughout the years he worked his ass off. Sometime around April of last year, Zenio told us he felt he wasn't good enough to deserve the attention of fans and he asked us whether he could stop streaming, stay out of the public eye, and focus solely on practicing until he thought he deserved to receive more attention. Sadly, he never got back to the level he was aiming for.
[...]
Last year, every now and then Zenio would shine in a team league match to give us hope, but overall it wasn't a great year for him. Sadly enough, it won't come as a surprise that Zenio is hanging up his gloves. Progaming is hard work, and it's not rewarding for everyone.
To the end, Zenio felt like he didn't deserve to be the center of attention and declined to comment on his retirement. Though he may feel like he could have given the fans more to cheer for, it has been more than a respectable career."
Another player who says goodbye to professional StarCraft is KiLLeR. Like Zenio, the Chilean Zerg didn't have a fruitful 2013 but he has decided to stay in eSports and pursue a career in League of Legends instead of embracing a full retirement.
KiLLeR spent the majority of his SC2 career with Team Dignitas, bringing them a bronze medal from IEM New York 2011 and a top eight finish from WCS World Championship 2012. In January last year, KiLLeR transferred to Clarity Gaming which was his home until December.
"Right now I'm devoting to League of Legends, and since I was recruited by a good Chilean team which announced me today probably so that KiLLiebers truth that maybe are not many but they are faithful, I know you will be with me and support me, I start LoL stream do for those who are interested and those who never have played it maybe I can teach him to learn so I can better support! stream will be doing training with the team + soloRanked, etc.! "
Translation courtesy of TL user adymus
