eXyu Steps Away From Pro League of Legends After Dignitas Benching

Dignitas jungler Lawrence “eXyu” Xu is stepping away from pro League of Legends, six years after dropping out of school to chase the career. eXyu wrote on 5 August 2026 that “this chapter of my life is coming to a close”, confirming plans to return to college for the Spring semester.

It’s been 6 years since I dropped out of school and decided to pursue a pro career in League. Even though my career wasn’t exactly what I imagined it to be, I’m extremely grateful to have experienced all the ups and downs of this lifestyle.

With that said, this chapter of my… pic.twitter.com/woI2xGDkmm

— eXyu 🐵 (@lol_eXyu) August 4, 2026

The announcement follows Dignitas moving him to the bench in favour of Joshua “Dardoch” Hartnett. Teamfight Tactics and Riftbound are where his competitive time goes in the meantime, both named in the post as his focus before the return to study.

What eXyu Said About Closing The Chapter

The six years he counted in the post run from the moment he left school to play League full time. He described a career that was not what he had pictured, while framing the ups and downs of the lifestyle as something he was grateful to have lived through, and thanked the people who followed him through it.

Riftbound drew the clearer enthusiasm of the two games he named, with eXyu describing himself as super excited for it. The post passed 92,000 views on the day it went up. Because the announcement arrived while he was already off the starting roster, the end of his playing career now runs to a fixed point, the close of the current split.

Dardoch Takes Over In The Dignitas Jungle

Sheep Esports first reported that eXyu was moving to the bench in favour of Dardoch, with Dignitas confirming the change afterwards. The swap takes eXyu out of the starting jungle role for the remainder of the split.

His own post draws the line after that: once the bench split ends, so does his run as a professional League player. With no starting seat to return to, the last competitive games of that run have already been played unless Dignitas field him again before the split closes.

From UC Berkeley To The LCS Main Stage

eXyu left UC Berkeley’s team six years ago and was in the Tier 2 scene only months later, joining Dignitas Academy as a hyped rookie with an aggressive jungling style. A spell on Cloud9’s amateur roster sat between the two.

Dignitas became the organisation his career was defined by. He debuted in the LCS a few months after arriving at the academy side, was sent back down to Tier 2, and came back up again. Every promotion he earned came with a demotion attached, and that movement between tiers, rather than a settled starting run, shaped the rest of his time in the scene.

The Spica Switch That Ended His First Dignitas Run

eXyu’s first spell with Dignitas ended in May 2024, when the organisation replaced him with Mingyi “Spica” Lu immediately before the split. Less than two weeks earlier, his general manager and head coach had reassured him that his place on the LCS roster was secure. The call came four days before the team were due to start scrims, and he wrote at the time that he did not yet know what he planned to do next.

He summed the experience up in one line: “nothing in esports is guaranteed”. The reversal cost him more than a single split. He left Dignitas over it and spent the following year back in Tier 2, in the newly formed NACL.

Disguised, And The Return To Dignitas

That year in Tier 2 ended with a return to the top flight at Disguised. The roster ran into the same trouble Dignitas had, in that year and the one after, and eXyu then made the surprising choice to go back to DIG. Two more splits produced similar results before the organisation moved for Dardoch. Both Tier 1 rosters he anchored struggled to reach deep playoff runs, and his second Dignitas run has ended where the first one did, with a replacement brought in over him.

Teammates And Casters Respond

Marc “RaafaaCasts” Arrambide, who came up through the same collegiate and amateur pipeline and debuted in the LCS alongside him, traced the route from UC Berkeley to Cloud9 amateur to Dignitas Academy and the main stage, signing off by calling him “forever my favorite baron stealer”. eXyu replied that Arrambide had been there the whole way, and told him to look him up in LA.

Ariendel, who played with eXyu on an early CNV roster, said he was proud that eXyu made it all the way to Tier 1 and regretted that the two never got to run it back together. DocRespawn pointed ahead to the Riftbound content and competition phase. Hayden and makrysNA added send-offs of their own.

Ilias “LoLEnatron” Theodorou said he hoped to meet eXyu again outside the esports circuit. eXyu told him he hopes the two can catch up at Worlds, and told Ariendel he will be back in NorCal in the spring.