The list of well-known League of Legends veterans who have hung up their mouse and keyboard in 2020 is still getting longer. Former South Korean mid laner and world champion Lee “Crown” Min-ho has retired from pro play, the 25-year-old announced in an Instagram post earlier today.
Crown started his journey as a League pro after leaving the StarCraft II scene in 2014. His career peaked in 2017 when he won the World Championship with Samsung Galaxy by beating SK Telecom T1. The team also missed the world title in 2016 by a single game against SKT.
In 2019, he came over to the U.S. to join the LCS team OpTic Gaming but had inconsistent performances with the squad. After a brief stint with CLG earlier this year, he came back to South Korea and joined Challengers Korea team OZ Gaming in April.
Crown looked back on his professional career in his Instagram post. “From a certain point, rather than being fun, interesting, and competitive, all my thoughts were filled with negative thoughts and started getting stressful,” he said, according to a translation by Inven Global. “I was dreaming things that I can’t realistically reach and said ‘this one more time, next one more time,’ and endured pathetically up to now. I think it’s finally time to let go.”
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It’s unclear if Crown will leave the League scene completely or if he’ll elect to pursue coaching or streaming for the upcoming season.
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