Doublelift JUST retired.

{quoted}

http://www.thescoreesports.com/lol/news/11433-doublelift-opens-up-on-lcs-burnout-it-s-such-a-bad-life

I think this idea of him doing it for the money is completely wrong tbh. Obviously he'll get more money, but I don't think he wants the money, I think he wants to do things for the fans more than anything at this point, and based on what he says in the article, it's actually fairly difficult to do that with how much time has to go into practice. Him streaming will give him a break mentally and physically, as well as allow him to connect with the fans way more than he's probably been able to throughout the season.

Imo, this honestly raises questions of if maybe the season should be shortened or what the teams need to allow payers these days off, because the conditions that players seem to go though are so damn grueling and I don't think the owners want to treat players like this, so there's gotta be some reason for it to happen and some way to fix it because the players should not need to dedicate their lives to this. Sure, a majority of their time, but they are practicing 11 months for 10-12 hours with only a few days off, that's ridiculous.

To me a lot of double's "reasons" sound more like excuses. No time for seeing a doctor. Come on. I'm sure if he told TSM he wanted to see a doctor they'd schedule it in. His lethargy and burnout are real, but also signals a lack of motivation. Winning NA finals is a huge reward and accomplishment in itself. It's not like the only thing that is satisfying is winning worlds.

Which leads me to believe his actual reasons are more political. Maybe this is a way of saying he thinks LCS players should be treated better, paid better, and have more off time. And I agree. I don't think the splits are necessarily too long, but the only way to improve at the moment due to a lack of robust sandbox tools force players to play long scrim blocks to see any improvements. And with the game changing so much and suddenly over the course of a season, it really ups the amount of work players need to put in to "adapt" to these changes.

Hopefully this move is big enough to signal to riot that some major changes need to be made not just to their approach of always changing the game up, but also providing useful practice tools and better conditions for players. Otherwise, it just ends up being a selfish move that I think will hurt his long term chances at being a pro player on a contending team.

Let's not forget there's already been talk about Double being a somewhat unpleasant personality on a team (CLG's exit) and his own admission that he was starting to loathe the lifestyle (of being an NA champion of all things).