Gen.G Resign Peanut

South Korean esports organization Gen.G resigned its star League of Legends player Han “Peanut” Wang-ho. The 24-year-old will return to compete under the Gen.G banner in the 2023 season, following a highly successful 2022 season.

On Monday, November 21, Gen.G announced that the organization had resigned jungler Peanut to its League of Legends division. The announcement comes on the first day of the LoL offseason, unveiling Gen. G’s first signing ahead of the 2023 season.

Although big news, the rest of the Gen.G’s roster (besides Jeong “Chovy” Ji-hoon) had their contracts run out today. This means that Gen.G technically have only two players locked in for the 2023 season, with Choi “Doran” Hyeon-joon, Son “Lehends” Si-woo, and Ko “YoungJae” Yeong-jae all entering free agency.

Notably, Gen.G already parted ways with its star ADC player, Park “Ruler” Jae-hyuk, who left the team on November 10, ending his nearly seven-year-long stint with the organization. So while Gen.G will retain its mid laner and jungler, there’s a good chance that its roster for the next season will look nothing like it did in 2022.

Peanut is widely regarded as one of the best players in his role. Peanut started his esports career in February 2015, when he got promoted to NaJin e-mFire’s main roster and has since played for eight different teams.

In January 2016, he joined ROX Tigers, with who he won LCK 2016 Summer Playoffs, reached the semifinals of the LoL World Championship 2016, and won KeSPA Cup 2016. Ahead of the 2017 season, Peanut joined SK Telecom T1, with who he won LCK 2017 Spring regular season and playoffs and added another trophy at Mid-Season Invitational 2017.

By the end of the year, Peanut also finished second in LCK 2020 Summer and reached the finals of the LoL World Championship 2017, where SK Telecom T1 lost against Samsung Galaxy.

In 2018, Peanut again jumped ship, joining Kingzone DreagonX (now DRX), helping the team with the LCK 2018 Spring regular season and playoffs. He then made the finals of MSI 2018 before missing out on LoL Worlds 2018 following a fourth-place finish in LCK 2018 Summer Playoffs and a runner-up finish in Korea Regional Finals.

As it has become a tradition, Peanut switched teams ahead of the next split, this time joining Gen.G, with who he spent just one split but was cut from the roster following a disappointing sixth-place finish in LCK 2019 Summer.

Still, he didn’t need long to find a new home, this time in the Chinese LoL team, LGD Gaming, with who he placed second in LPL 2020 Regional Finals and qualified for LoL Worlds 2020.

Peanut’s penultimate stop of his LoL esports career was at Nongshim RedForce in the LCK, with who he has achieved reasonable success. Unfortunately, he again failed to reach LoL Worlds with a third-place finish in the LCK 2021 Regional Finals.

Seeing Gen.G resign Peanut hardly comes as a surprise, even though Peanut has never spent more than one season with a single team. However, due to the success the Korean team have achieved with the jungler, the contract extension was expected.

In the 2022 season, Peanut and Gen.G established themselves as one of the best Korean LoL teams and carried that tag straight to the LoL Worlds 2022.

Gen.G placed second in LCK 2022 Spring and reached the finals of the LCK 2022 Spring Playoffs. Then, they dominated the LCK 2022 Summer split, with a 17-1 regular season record, and won the LCK 2022 Summer trophy, earning a direct bye to LoL Worlds.

Despite entering the season-culminating event as one of the main favorites, Gen.G crashed out in the semifinals, where they lost against the eventual champions DRX. Still, regardless of a bittersweet ending to the season, seeing Gen.G retain the key pieces that helped the team reach new heights makes a lot of sense.