C9 Khroen retires from competitive TFT to focus on streaming

Popular player and streamer Khroen will no longer be playing Teamfight Tactics competitively for Cloud9, he announced last night. Instead, he’ll stream full time for the organization and pursue work as a broadcast talent and commentator in the TFT space.

In the short history of competitive TFT, Khroen has been among the best performers in the North American scene, consistently qualifying for and placing highly in top tournaments across the region.

Khroen cited motivation and poor mental health for his decision to retire. “I can’t get away from the fact that recently I’ve been in and out of a pretty large mental slump, which has greatly contributed to my choice to break away from competing in TFT,” Khroen said.

Before TFT, Khroen played Heroes of the Storm at the highest level, achieving success with Gale Force eSports and HeroesHearth. This long stretch of serious competition across multiple titles wore away at Khroen’s motivation.

“For a while, I was kind of in a toxic mental cycle of not being motivated to play as much TFT as I usually would, so naturally I was worse at the game and not performing up to my expectations of myself,” Khroen said. “Then I would feel worse that I wouldn’t be reaching those expectations and force myself to play but then I wasn’t focused at all.”

Khroen has been doing commentary work with GiantslayerTV and its weekly Fight Night Rising tournament series, which he’ll be continuing with, as well as working on expanding his streaming schedule to be more consistent.