Gen.G and Ruler Part Ways

Gen.G announced on Thursday, November 10, that it has parted ways with Park “Ruler” Jae-hyuk. With that, the legendary League of Legends ADC player is confirmed to leave the South Korean esports organization after over six years.

The 2022 League of Legends offseason has already proven to be highly chaotic, featuring a plethora of unexpected roster changes across all regions. Yet Ruler’s departure from Gen.G stands out as the most shocking roster change of the year.

Ruler made his professional debut in January 2016 with Stardust, who he left after just three months to join Samsung Galaxy in May 2016. With Samsung Galaxy, Ruler has achieved a lot in the first year with the organization, granted the team had a rough start.

After finishing the LCK 2016 Summer regular season and the playoffs in fourth place, Samsung Galaxy found momentum in the Korea Regional Finals 2016, which they won, locking a spot in the LoL World Championship. And despite entering the season-culminating event as Korea’s fourth seed, Samsung Galaxy made it all the way to the finals, where they narrowly lost against SK Telecom T1 (2-3).

Ruler continued with strong showings in the 2017 season, helping his team win IEM Season 11 Gyeonggi and finish LCK 2017 Spring Playoffs in second place. Samsung Galaxy again had a rough summer split, yet the Korean squad would again win Korea Regional Finals 2017 to qualify for LoL Worlds. Only this time, SSG went all the way and won the World Championship, dethroning SKT.

Ruler remained with the rebranding to KSV eSports and Gen.G, serving as the starting ADC for the next five years. And even though Gen.G failed to win another LoL Worlds title, Ruler and his crew achieved a lot.

Notably, Ruler helped Gen.G claim three LCK silver medals and led the organization to the LCK 2022 Summer Playoffs title. Moreover, he has helped Gen.G qualify for every LoL World Championship, finishing the latter two (2021 and 2022) in the semifinals.

But despite Ruler’s success with Gen.G, the 23-year-old LoL player decided to part ways with the organization. Reportedly, he has already made up his mind and opted to leave ahead of the 2023 season during the spring split – as stated by his teammate Son “Lehends” Si-woo.

But whether the case might be, Gen.G have stated that Ruler’s departure came as a mutual agreement between the two parties. The departure comes just one season following Gen. G’s complete restructure of its LoL division, which occurred ahead of the 2022 season.

At the time, Gen.G parted ways with all of its players except Ruler, around whom the Korean organization decided to build a new superteam, signing Son “Lehends” Si-woo, Jeong “Chovy” Ji-hoon, Han “Peanut” Wang-ho, and Choi “Doran” Hyeon-joon.

The new-look roster achieved a lot in 2022 and won the organization’s first LCK title. But once again, Gen.G fell apart at the LoL World Championship, where they couldn’t make it past the eventual champions, DRX, who eliminated them from the semifinals.

Besides Ruler’s departure, Gen.G has not announced any other roster changes, suggesting that the organization will look to build around mid-laner Chovy. However, the offseason is still fairly young, so there’s a chance that Gen.G might look to replace other pieces ahead of the next season.

It’s currently unknown who will replace Ruler as Gen. G’s ADC, but it’s fair to say that Gen.G will have plenty of options. With how the LoL offseason has gone so far, many elite-level players are leaving their organization and are on the lookout for a new team to join, and that includes some of the world’s top ADC players in Kim “Deft” Hyuk-kyu, Lee “Prince” Chae-hwan, and Chen “GALA” Wei.