SK Gaming's year is over. Following a defeat at the hands of G2 Esports, the squad has been eliminated from the 2025 League of Legends EMEA Championship (LEC) season. Although the German organization secured a victory against Team Heretics last week, it wasn’t enough to keep their playoff hopes alive. In an exclusive interview, the team’s midlaner, Felix "Abbedagge" Braun, sat down with Sheep Esports to discuss the loss, reflect on what the future holds, and share his regrets.

What did you think of the match against G2? What went wrong in particular?

Felix "Abbedagge" Braun: "G2 played really well today. They played the fundamentals well and outplayed us in rotations and vision. Honestly, they played really well. We’re not used to that kind of level from scrims, at least, because we’re scrimming a lot of the weaker teams. They really outclassed us today.

How do you reflect overall on this split and how things have gone?

Abbedagge: It’s just been a difficult year overall. I went from a struggling team with Disguised to SK. We had a lot of time to prepare and started scrimming about a month before the split. We even had the NNO Cup to warm up a team, but we still didn’t manage to improve that much. We definitely improved from the beginning, but for the LEC, our level wasn't high enough. It’s always hard to be on a struggling team, to keep your mental state and confidence. Then people lose trust in their teammates, and all this becomes a big cocktail of emotions and problems. It’s really hard if you don’t completely drop your ego and just accept, “Okay, we are bad, but that’s okay. We need to improve and be open about it—about the problems as individuals and as a team.” Only then can you start to become the team you need to be and fuse together through the struggles. But to be honest, we haven’t really managed to do that in this team, so it’s a bit sad.

Do you think the difficulty in accepting and moving forward was worsened by the short format, with little room for mistakes?

Abbedagge: Yeah, it’s definitely hard with this format—only four matches and only playing against four teams. It didn’t allow us to scrim a lot of the teams. The teams in our group didn't want to scrim us, and the good teams don’t want to scrim us either, because we’re not the best. So yeah, we were having a lot of scrims with the weaker teams, but then you can't really improve because your opponents are bad. To be honest, that probably wasn’t even our main problem—we still lost most of our scrims against these weaker teams. It’s just been a struggle this year.

After two difficult splits with DSG, how did you react to getting the SK offer? What were your thoughts before joining SK, especially considering it’s a one-split contract and your future with the org is uncertain?

Abbedagge: I had a little bit of hope for another miracle run. It’s kind of been the story of my career in the later parts—where we have a struggling team and need to come back from the trenches. That’s why I always believed it was possible to work through the problems and become a strong team in the LEC. I was excited to join a new project and play in the LEC, and honestly excited to play EU West solo queue because there’s a bigger player base.

In North America, I had like a 30-minute queue time at 11 p.m., it wasn't great. To be honest though, the solo queue level in Europe isn’t very high either, but at least queue times are shorter. You still play with a lot of one-tricks and people with big egos who don’t play any macro and think they’re the best players in the world. You just have to try to improve through scrims and by watching other regions.

It’s been a mental struggle for me this year because I’ve been fighting not to get into a bad mindset where I think, “Man, this situation is shit.” I feel like I didn’t play my own game because even when I knew a call was bad, I would still follow it to maintain trust in our struggling team. I’m not sure why it’s so hard for me not to commit to our team's bad plays, even when I know they don't make any sense. Lately, I realized that I needed to focus on making my own plan for how I want to get ahead in the game and gain advantages, and work with my team to tell them what I need. That’s one of the most important things in a struggling team—strong individuals who have their own ideas and don’t just blindly play along. That’s what makes a strong team.

Considering your future, where do you see yourself a year from now? Could you see yourself playing in the ERLs again if the offseason doesn't go your way again?

Abbedagge: I’m not sure, to be honest. I really love the game still, but I’m not sure if it would be worth it. Sometimes I feel like I invest so much time but don’t get the results I want. But I really, really love the game, so it would be sad to quit playing now. I kind of want to keep working in some form or way. I might consider going into positional coaching or something like that at some point."