Ju 'Sting' Hoon retires

This article was originally published on GameSpot's sister site onGamers.com, which was dedicated to esports coverage.

Sting was easily one of the breakout performances of 2012. After reaching the Ro4 in the fourth annual Team Liquid Starleague, he found a home in the Benelux-based organisation Western Wolves and his first event under the banner would be IEM Singapore. IEM Singapore became his greatest success throughout his entire SC2 career as he managed to best players like Pedro 'LucifroN' Moreno Durán, Jung 'YugiOh' Seung Il and finally Manuel 'Grubby' Schenkhuizen in the grand finals.

After this initial burst of success for the terran, everything seemed to slow down as he finished in 2nd place at the ESET UK Masters where he lost to the HSC V winner Jens 'Snute' Aasgaard. From there on, he was barely seen in the competitive scene aside from the online team-based tournament Acer Teamstory Cup. His final impressive individual performance was at Dreamhack Summer 2013, where he managed to defeat the eventual 2nd place finisher Lee 'Jaedong' Jae Dong in the tournament's groupstage.

Following yesterdays announcement from Western Wolves, that the team will disband come December 31st, it's not hard to see why Hoon would decide to retire at this time.

Image Source: Madcatz.com, Westernwolves.com