WCS EU season 2 champion Kim 'duckdeok' Kyeong Deok retires from professional Starcraft 2

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

Following a very successful 2013 which included victory at the second season of WCS EU and a 5th-8th place finish at the 2013 WCS Global Finals, Kim 'duckdeok' Kyeong Deok has today announced that he will retire from SC2 and progaming.

duckdeok started his progaming career in the Korean clan Werra, now most famously known for being current Team Acer coach Cella's starting ground in the SC2 scene, in late 2010 under the handle LoveRip. His stay at the clan was unfortunately one muddled with stories of sexual misconduct from the clan's manager at the time, Gundam. When duckdeok came out with the allegations against his former manager, the clan disbanded shortly thereafter and duckdeok took an extensive break from progaming. He was 15 years old at the time.

In late 2011, a year after the traumatic experiences at Werra, he returned to progaming as one of the key protoss players for team MVP under the handle Finale. Qualifying for Code A multiple times and also securing a spot in the 5th GSL Code S season of 2012 were his most succesful results in terms of Korean competition. He was no stranger to the non-Korean scene either, as he participated in as many online tournaments as he possibly could, and also won a French invitational LAN dubbed "Revenge of the Nerds", beating Korean WC3 legend Jang 'Moon' Jae-Ho with a score of 3-1 in the finals.

It wouldn't be until mid-2013 when he would become a recognized face outside of Korea. Now sporting the name duckdeok, he tried to qualify for WCS EU Season 1, but he would have to besatisfied with a guaranteed position in the next season's premier league division instead. There, he was always considered an underdog against all of his opponents and found himself on a total of six tied matches throughout his run. But it would not be enough to deny him his first major victory as he defeated Jang 'MC' Min Chul 4-3 in the grand finals of the tournament.

Whilst he never was able to reproduce that one miracle run again in his career, placing 16th at the WCS Season 2 Grand Finals and 5th in the following season's WCS EU. His WCS Global Finals run would almost to as incredible, beating out Lee 'INnoVation' Shin Hyung 3-2, but only just slipping at the finish line against prodigy Cho 'Maru' Sung Choo, losing with a 2-3 score.

With all this said, one of the most unpredictable players in recent Starcraft memory slips away, but hopefully his trials and tribulations along with his results will not be forgotten.

Image Source: Intel Extreme Masters, Thisisgame

Video Source: Intel Extreme Masters