Chinese LoL pro Styz banned from competitive play for one year [UPDATED]

So far, the break between the LPL spring and the LPL summer has been pretty crazy. But the biggest news yet comes as a massive blow to LGD, which showed signs of promise in the spring before ultimately finishing fifth. The team’s AD carry, Styz, has been banned from competitive play for a full year.

(See: An exclusive interview with Styz)

The decision was announced on Wednesday by the L-ACE Alliance, which is the League of Legends branch of the Association of China E-Sports. Apparently, Styz was found to have been privately communicating with another club (likely negotiating a contract), which is against L-ACE’s regulations because his contract with LGD had not expired. He also seems to have been neglecting some of his LGD duties in a bid to force LGD to terminate his contract.

As a result, Styz was banned for a year, and his contract with LGD has also been frozen, so whether he’ll be able to play with LGD when the ban is up remains to be seen.

This is terrible news for LGD, as Styz was arguably the team’s best player, and the core of the squad. He earned a pentakill once during the spring split, and together with Pyl (LGD’s other top-rated player), he was part of one of the best bot lanes in China. Now LGD will be left scrambling to find a replacement, and Styz will be doomed to spend the next year in solo queue, wondering if he just prematurely ended his own professional career.

UPDATE: In a move that probably isn’t a coincidence, Edward Gaming announced yesterday that CEO E Feng has “temporarily resigned,” whatever that means. Comments that were passed around Chinese message boards but have since been deleted apparently seemed to show E Feng encouraging Styz to ’cause a fuss’ at LGD.

But it doesn’t make much sense that EDG would have been agitating to get Styz to move to his team considering that EDG’s current ADC, Namei, is excellent. One rumor being suggested is that EDG (or perhaps just E Feng personally) is looking to found a second team. It’s not entirely clear exactly what happened yet, but we’ll definitely be keeping an eye on this story as it sounds like other clubs might ultimately also be implicated.

(via Netease Games)

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