Fabian “Febiven” Diepstraten comes out of retirement

The 25-year-old mid laner from the Netherlands came out of retirement after a bit over 9 months. Febiven at his peak was considered one of the best players in the world and was arguably the best mid laner in Europe. This was a few years ago, around the 2015-2016 season, when Fnatic was dominating the west. Febiven got nicknamed The Godslayer after he completely obliterated Faker at the 2015 MSI where he solo-killed the Korean legendary player. Let’s go back over Febiven’s career to find out what exactly happened before and after his best moment.

It all started when Cloud 9 Eclipse, which was C9’s European team, picked him up. Febiven and his team had one goal in mind, to promote to the LCS through the EU LCS Challengers tournament. They managed to win in the first Challengers tournament of the spring split where they took down Gamers2 (now known as G2 Esports). But a couple of weeks later, C9 Eclipse managed to perform as expected and got eliminated from the tournament in the very first round of the bracket. The team went on to compete in other amateur tournaments and they found quite a bit of success, but their goal of promoting to the EU LCS was still left unchecked. After winning the Spring Challenger playoffs, C9 Eclipse finally had the chance to snatch a spot in the LCS. Unluckily for them, SUPA HOT CREW knocked them out of the tournament after scoring a clean sweep.

Febiven went on to join H2k-Gaming, a fairly known esports organization in Europe back in the day. Just like with C9E, Febiven found a lot of success in the Challenger Series tournaments and managed to win the Challenger Summer Playoffs where they had a really close series in the grand finals against SK Gaming. The Spring Expansion Tournament arrived and Febiven had one more shot at getting into the EU LCS. H2k-Gaming had to face GIANTS Gaming in the finals in order to qualify for the LCS, and they rolled over Giants in a clean series. Now H2k Gaming acquired a spot in the EU LCS but that wasn’t enough for Febiven, he wanted to play with the best team possible, so he joined Fnatic, one of the strongest teams in the region.

This is when Febiven found the biggest amount of success and gained worldwide recognition after the 2015 MSI. His Fnatic run lasted for almost 2 years then he decided to venture into North America. But in hindsight, that was one of the biggest mistakes Fabian could’ve made. He was consistently underperforming in the NA LCS and didn’t even manage to get a top 3 placement in the 2 splits he played in NA. After that, it was never the same for Febiven, he went back to Europe where he would play for Misfits Gaming for over 2 years in the LEC, but his results weren’t outstanding.

After his run on Misfits, Febiven decided to try his luck with Fnatic once again. This time he joined Fnatic’s 2nd division team, Fnatic Rising, which was participating in the NLC. Febiven started to have good results, he placed first in two regular splits in a row, but Febiven’s motivation seemed to run out and he decided to retire on July 17, 2021. Now Fabian is looking to come back into the scene and take the competition by storm, he might or might not still have what is required to be a top-tier mid laner in Europe, but he is definitely not going to give up that easily.