The shortest game in professional League of Legends history is the story of a
charming outlaw, unrequited love, a heartfelt memorial
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and the bitter fury of a game developer scorned.
Jeon "Apdo" Sang-gil was once revered as one of the greatest League of Legends players in the world.
He conquered solo queue taking the top
spots in both Korea and China all while playing four positions at the same time.
"The sick thing about Apdo is he can play practically every single role in
the game and be good enough to get accounts super high up in Challenger.
Now that's not even the case for Faker."
But Apdo wasn't trying to go pro
Apdo was Elo boosting.
Apdo would take your money and boost your account all the way
to the highest reaches of solo queue, all while maintaining his own fantastic record.
Obviously, Riot didn't like that.
Riot's generally not a fan of when
people mess with the competitive integrity of their game, so whenever they gathered
up enough evidence of Apdo's Elo boosting they'd ban him, but then Apdo would show
up on a new account and the chase would start all over again.
The money was good, but there wasn't any glory in it
Faker had just come off his rookie season World Championship win.
Meanwhile, Apdo, the king of Korean solo queue was
running and hiding from Riot. He wasn't getting a chance to test his mettle on
stage against Korea's best. So Apdo gathered up a few friends from solo
queue and formed Team Dark. Led by their misfit hero they would compete in the
Pandora Champions Winter 2013 to 2014 qualifiers and if they made it they
would give Apdo a chance to show that he had what it took to go toe-to-toe with
the best players in the world.
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But the day before the offline qualifiers, Riot banned
Apdo from playing in professional tournaments for two years, and banned his
main account for 1,000 years.
That's not a joke. He's literally banned from
playing League of Legends until the year 3013.
Allegedly this had to do with a girl who came to Apdo for Elo boosting, but when she
developed feelings for him he turned her down and she turned him in.
Team Dark was forced to play without Apdo, and though they made it into Champions, it just
didn't seem like their hearts were in it anymore.
They'd lost Apdo, their charismatic solo-queue rebel leader, and without him
they kind of fell apart.
In their second game against Samsung Ozone, Team Dark went full meme.
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They drafted an all-jungler composition in honor of the then-recently-retired
Korean jungler CloudTemplar.
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Plus, Team Dark spelled out "Let's Go Gank"
if you read out the first characters of their banned Champion's names.
Team Dark's comp was never supposed to be in a lane, so Samsung Ozone went just as memey.
They drafted all AD carries and bruisers, designed to push lanes and take
towers as fast as possible.
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They annihilated Team Dark in just over eight minutes.
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Three days later, KeSPA and OGN disqualified Team Dark for intentionally throwing
their matches. And as far as anyone knows, none of those players ever played
pro League of Legends ever again.
Team Dark probably had it coming if you think about it.
The highest level of League of Legends competition in the world is
maybe not the best place for your memorial meme comp. But Team Dark didn't care.
They'd just lost Apdo, and while he'd eventually return to solo queue, he's
still banned from playing under his own name until the 31st century.
His teammates' careers were forever ruined, but they were also just solo queue randos.
For his part, Apdo streams on other accounts now, and says he'll pay
Riot $100,000 to get his main one back. But Riot has every right to take apart
Elo boosters. These days Apdo mostly streams from China, after winning a
contest that saw him take first place in the solo queue rankings there and also
resulted in the single greatest picture in esports history.
But Apdo's competitive ban ended in 2015. There's no reason he couldn't try out for a pro
team right now, but Apdo doesn't care. He doesn't want to play in Riot's system.
Once upon a time he was the greatest midlaner in the world.
But now, he's just a guy playing League of Legends with a plate full of money.