EnVyUs sign DEVIL

The 21-year-old will step into the shoes of Fabien "⁠kioShiMa⁠" Fiey, who has been given his marching orders as Envy look to fine-tune their squad ahead of the MLG Columbus major.

The French team have been on a poor run of form for several months now, winning just the Global eSports Cup Finals since lifting the DreamHack Open Cluj-Napoca title, back in November.

At the start of the year, Envy brought in Mathieu "⁠Maniac⁠" Quiquerez as a coach in an effort to improve their tactical flexibility, but the team continued blowing hot and cold and finished third-fourth at the StarSeries Finals, fifth at ESL Expo Barcelona and 11th-12th at IEM Katowice. With their disappointing campaign in Poland, the French giants moved down three places to fifth in our world ranking.

With Nathan "⁠NBK-⁠" Schmitt recently hinting that some of the players on the squad were not performing at their best, many looked at kioShiMa, who had sub 1.0 ratings at all offline events attended by EnVyUs in 2016, including the Game Show finals, as the weakest link on the roster.

In a statement, kioShiMa admitted that internal issues had made it impossible for him to show his true colours and insisted that he is not yet done with competitive gaming.

"This is the end of an adventure, my time as a player in EnVyUs is over," Fiey told EnVyUs' website. "I am leaving this team with mainly good memories who are going to stay forever as the many big trophies we won as a team.

"I insist on part 'as a team' because if I am here today it is mainly because the team was not acting as one anymore. Our cohesion had become really bad, the comunication between players became even worse, we had basically lost our souls.

"I personally found it really hard to work in those conditions and could not make it through, my point of view is that I cannot work that many hours with people you cannot communicate with properly or who do not entirely respect you.

"So there it is, even after everything that happened, I still wish them a good future, and maybe they will get  the boost they need by bringing a new player.

"The way I performed in the last few months was not the real me, I will come back to my highest level where I was feeling comfortable and I will bounce back stronger than ever."

Timothée "⁠DEVIL⁠" Démolon burst onto the competitive scene in January 2015, when he joined Platinium-eSport's squad, who would later sign for LDLC as their "White" squad.

With a 1.41 rating, he was the MVP of Assembly Winter 2016, which his team won by beating home side ENCE in the grand final. He also acquitted himself really well at the PGL Europe Minor Championship, in Bucharest, where he posted a 1.34 rating despite LDLC being sent home after just two matches. 

"Today is a great day for me, I join one of the best teams in the world," he said. "I still have not realised how lucky I am because this is the team that makes French people dream.

"I will do anything to be at the level of my new teammates and to bring them things that they perhaps lacked.

"I would like to thank my former teammates for giving me the chance to play alongside them for over a year and for becoming great friends with whom I shared wonderful times.

"I would also like to thank some people without whom this would not have been possible, Team LDLC (MoMaN, Marty, Llo, Geekory), and also EnVyUs for giving me this opportunity. I will give everything to live up to expectations."

Envy will make their first appearance with the new roster on Wednesday, against G2, in the ESL Pro League.

With these changes, the French team now have:

Nathan "⁠NBK-⁠" Schmitt
Vincent "⁠Happy⁠" Schopenhauer
Kenny "⁠kennyS⁠" Schrub
Dan "⁠apEX⁠" Madesclaire
Timothée "⁠DEVIL⁠" Démolon 

Thanks @ldlc for this amazing experience, I will never forget you and I will give my best to make you proud pic.twitter.com/tODUkaUhZn

— Timothée Demolon (@nV_DEVIL) 8 March 2016