LTA North — Shopify Rebellion: Revolt of the Unyieldings

After back-to-back seventh-place finishes, Shopify Rebellion is heading into 2025 having only retained Ju "Bvoy" Yeong-hoon from their 2024 LCS roster — with the recently-announced Moist Esports merger, the team has the potential to capitalize on massive fandom if it finds competitive success. Despite the extent of the roster changes, Head Coach Seong "Reven" Sang-hyeon emphasized that leadership didn’t see 2024 as a failure that necessitated dropping all but one player: circumstances permitting, the team was happy to continue with a majority of the roster.

“We [parted ways with] Aaron (Aaron "FakeGod" Lee) and Tomio (Tomio "Tomio" Chan) early in the offseason because of issues that we thought were kind of unfixable,” Reven explained, “and leadership [wanted] a two-year plan for the roster — if you look at GCD, all of us [...] are signed on two-year contracts.” The two-year requirement forced the team to move on from Lee "Bugi" Seong-yeop — a standout jungler on low-achieving rosters in the LCS over the last few years who they would’ve otherwise been happy to continue with — since he couldn’t commit to a two-year contract.

Shopify had also hoped to keep Tristan "Zeyzal" Stidam on the roster, preserving a botlane duo that received significant praise at points in 2024, but the LCS veteran wanted a break from Tier 1 play, forcing them to look elsewhere. While Denilson "Ceos" Oliveira Gonçalves’s visa is finalized, though, Zeyzal has been scrimming with the team as a substitute support.

Generally, Reven highlighted the importance of a versatile roster, disagreeing heavily with rosterbuilding philosophies that build around a single carry threat. In NA, he argued, it just doesn’t make sense to build a roster that way. “In my opinion, the only next level carries were Berserker (Kim Min-cheol) and Jojopyun (Joseph Pyun) — and they both left NA," Reven underlined. "Among the rest, frankly, it can be anyone on any given day. Whether in scrims or on stage, if one team had one or both of Berserker and Jojopyun, you always felt like [...] they had this aura as a carry. And that’s specifically mechanically, other great players like Impact (Jeong Eon-young), CoreJJ (Jo Yong-in), and Inspired (Kacper Słoma) bring their own things that make their teams very strong.”

He caveated, of course, that Fahad "Massu" Abdulmalek had demonstrated that same level of carry potential, but for a shorter period of time — no longer, for example, than Cristian "Palafox" Palafox had performed to a high caliber in 2023. If anyone, he said, “Massu can probably be that [level of carry].” That philosophy left the field wide open for SR, especially considering their financial weight in negotiations. They got their pick of the litter from NA’s free agents, and they built a roster that can aim to qualify for cross-conference play.

“I don’t know what it is about Fudge (Ibrahim Allami) that makes people [so angry], but [...] setting aside [our] personal relationship, I’ve always thought Fudge was a [much better] player than people give him credit for” Reven explained, “even when I was a competitor against him last year, I continued to think he was a good player. He showed interest early in the offseason, and [...] I snapped him up.”

After being dropped from Cloud9’s active roster after Spring split last year for Park "Thanatos" Seung-gyu, Fudge spent Summer split on the bench — though he received the brunt of the community criticism for underwhelming results early in the year, the team still failed to live up to expectations later in the year. After four years under C9’s banner, Fudge is moving to a new team in hopes of reclaiming his spot at the top of his role.

Juan Arturo "Contractz" Garcia seemed to be, alongside Fudge, an easy decision from Reven’s perspective — the opportunity to pick him up presented itself early in the offseason, and Contractz expressed interest in joining the roster after NRG’s departure from the league “Watching his games [for the past several years], I always felt like Contractz was the main threat on his team — if you shut him down, the rest of the team couldn’t really do anything," Reven said. "I always viewed him highly for that reason.”

Last year, SR saw its highest peaks when Bugi could dominate the map and enable Bvoy to carry the game, and Contractz is a perfect choice to take that spot. Though NRG’s results weren’t the best last year, most analysts still praised Contractz — if jungle wasn’t such a stacked role in NA, it’s likely he would’ve gotten All-Pro honors throughout the year. He was, by far, the most active and consistent piece on CLG and NRG.

Palafox was the latest piece of the SR roster to lock, and Reven openly admitted that he considered several options before him. First up was Jojopyun — by far the most skilled North American midlaner to ever play League of Legends and the first choice for most teams in the LEC and LTA. After, of course, the teams got over C9’s shocking choice to unceremoniously dismiss the young prodigy, which Reven made sure to highight.

At a certain point, though, it became clear that Jojopyun had different goals, and he ended up committing to MKOI. Yasin "Nisqy" Dinçer, who has found success in NA in the past, was Reven’s next choice. However, a couple of days after reaching a verbal agreement, Nisqy informed the team that he wanted to take a break from professional play: “He was very respectful about it, [and] it was early in the offseason,” Reven explained, so the team wasn’t too fussed about finding someone to fill the spot.

“I’ve said this [before], but in my head I was kind of against [picking up] Palafox until later,” Reven explained — it wasn’t until the veteran midlaner reached out for a conversation that Reven could see him fitting with the team. His drive, willingness to recognize and fix his mistakes, and deft analysis of his past results impressed Reven enough to completely flip his opinion. “He didn’t have the best 2023, [...] but this might sound like a PR statement, but it really isn’t — he’s actually surprised me the most out of the five players I’ve worked with so far. Whether in solo queue or scrims, he’s defied all of my worries about him and shown only good sides so far, whether in game or out of game.”

As the offseason kicked off, having heard a rumor that Riot would permit Brazilian players to join LTA teams without taking up an import slot, Reven penciled in Ceos and initiated conversations to buy him out from KaBuM! Esports, setting his sights on Nisqy as his second traditional import. “I’ve always had a bit of a soft spot for Brazil, and have continued to watch [the region] even for the past three years [in NA],” said Reven — from competing against him in CBLOL, he was already familiar with Ceos as a talent.

In his view, Ceos had spent years as one of the most successful and dominant players in the region for good reason. As a support, Ceos had earned his spot at the top of the list. With Nisqy replaced by Palafox, an NA resident, Shopify’s roster has an open import slot, which is fairly abnormal for teams aiming for the top.

Reven, though, wasn’t fussed about picking up one of the Korean midlaners — Kang "Saint" Sung-in, Lee "Loki" Sang-min, and Kim "Keine" Joon-cheol — who committed to LTAN teams this year. After recent successes like Lim "Quid" Hyeon-seung and Song "Quad" Su-hyeong, he warned, it can be easy to forget how many Korean import players ended up being horrendous fits for their rosters. Generally, he saw the risks of cultural integration as far too risky, especially since he “wasn’t super impressed with the players coming here” this year.

Though Fudge and Contractz were technically locked in early, it seemed like Ceos was the most solid, earliest decision Shopify reached — he’s been domestically dominant, albeit in a weaker region, and will now have to prove that he can do the same in NA. Reven, for his part, seems to think it’ll be easy, even if it’ll be a bit before he’s able to play on stage with the team.