Planetkey release team

When Planetkey Dynamics last competed offline, during the ESL Meisterschaft Winter 2015 Finals, the team finished in 3-4th place and only featured one of its current members, Robin "⁠r0bs3n⁠" Stephan, who previously had achieved his highest renown during a quarter-finals finish with PENTA at the DreamHack Winter 2014 Major.

That previous Planetkey lineup evidently fell apart as, by the new year, the German organisation had brought on-board four new players from the Phoenix lineup who then joined up alongside r0bs3n.

Many of the Phoenix players, in addition to r0bs3n himself, have been skirting controversy in one way or another in the past year, with at least three of the Planetkey players having been involved in the myRevenge betting scandal as well as Thilo "⁠syken⁠" Phan's involvement in the former uX Gaming team who fielded cheater Sebastian "⁠xenn⁠" Hoch in an official match inadvertently.

The organisation itself have also flown into trouble at times as a player from a former lineup, Anil "⁠cLy⁠" Gülec was VAC banned and forced to exit the squad.

The actions of the past few days however may have reached a fever pitch of notoriety as Planetkey saw themselves disqualified from E-frag.net's Rising Stars Europe after winning first place due to betting violations which saw syken and Koray "⁠xall⁠" Yaman place extremely high bets on themselves to win the grand final against Revival; in addition, players such as ALTERNATE aTTaX's Oliver "⁠kzy⁠" Heck outright accused the team of discretely cheating during the online tournament.

As a result of this controversy, the Planetkey organisation have decided to release their team with immediate effect. In a statement given in German on the decision, Planetkey stated:

"We have released our CS:GO team with immediate effect. In yesterday's final of the Rising Stars Europe tournament, our players xall and syken clearly acted against the tournament rules by going onto CS:GO Lounge and betting on the game. This act lead to our subsequent disqualification from the tournament. We hereby dissociate ourselves from the misconduct of the players and apologize to the other participants and fans."

Planetkey's lineup was:

Robin "⁠r0bs3n⁠" Stephan
Bastian "⁠ayken⁠" Schendzielorz
Ammar "⁠am0⁠" Cakmak
Koray "⁠xall⁠" Yaman
Thilo "⁠syken⁠" Phan

Jan "⁠LyGHT⁠" Patocka* (only a stand-in during the Rising Stars Europe final) 

A brief list of controversial incidents surrounding the parties involved:

• cLy handed VAC Ban and leaves team despite Planetkey at first supporting their player.
• r0bs3n and am0 involved in betting scandal on myRevenge in early 2015; dismissed from organisation and threatened with legal action. xall, ayken, and j1n were also previously on the team.
• r0bs3n and am0 on KILLERFISH lineup banned from CSGOLounge due to "suspicious betting patterns." Team asserts their innocence; ban is only lifted when aforementioned players leave the lineup.
• syken, ayken, and j1n all involved in uX Gaming lineup released due to cheating accusations as well syken allowing xenn, a cheater banned by FACEIT, to play on a smurf account for him; players threatened with legal action.

stich writes for HLTV.org and can be found on Twitter