One of the UK’s best League of Legends top-laners is leaving the game to join G2 Esports’ newly announced Overwatch team.
numlocked currently plays for Choke Gaming’s League of Legends team and will continue to do so until i56 is finished on December 13th.
G2 Esports announced on its website that Seb will be joining the team alongside fellow Brit Michael “Mike” Adams (from Wales), as well as French pros Hugo “Flippy” Perhirin, Théo “Tek” Guillebaud and Jean-Louis “KnOxXx” Boyer, and German player Stefan “schocky” Berends.
Before playing League of Legends competitively, numlocked played Team Fortress 2, where he picked up several accolades including first place at the Insomnia49 TF2 World Championship.
He went on to win the 4Nations with Choke last year – check out our interview with numlocked after winning 4Nations here.
In June this year, numlocked left Choke Gaming to join Oyun Hizmetleri in the Turkish LCS, but in September announced he had left due to communication issues.
He rejoined Choke Gaming recently, and helped the team secure an ESL UK semi-final spot against FM-eSports (taking place in Leicester on December 6th).
“After ESL and iseries I’ll be quitting League of Legends to focus on Overwatch,” numlocked confirmed to eSports News UK.
“I’m gonna miss playing [League of Legends]. It was just an exciting opportunity, playing with old friends and a new game – I wanted to give it a try.”
excited about playing lots of OW now 🙂 https://t.co/8syljCh1sh
— Seb Barton (@G2numlocked) November 26, 2015
numlocked played with Mike, KnOxXx and schocky for about two years, and has played with Tek and Flippy for a few months.
Seb tells us that Tek, Mike and KnOxXx have experience together, as do Flippy and Tek, meaning the team should gel very well together.
G2’2 chief gaming officer Jakub “Lothar” Szygulski added: “As an avid gamer and veteran of FPS games -(and a fan of Blizzard) I was incredibly excited when Overwatch was announced.
“I can’t imagine that this title won’t be a competetive blast, the combination of FPS and MOBA genres will make this game unique across esports, so it was natural for me to search for a skilled and aspiring team which will represent our colors and values.
“I’m very proud to say that G2 is one of the first clubs that is bringing its own team for Overwatch, which I’m already a huge fan of. We can’t wait for the tournaments to come and competition that will appear in the future.
“Mark my words: G2 will be the best! Please welcome our new team.”
Good luck Seb – we’re going to miss you in that top lane!
Dom is an award-winning writer and finalist of the Esports Journalist of the Year 2023 award. He graduated from Bournemouth University with a 2:1 degree in Multi-Media Journalism in 2007.
As a long-time gamer having first picked up the NES controller in the late ’80s, he has written for a range of publications including GamesTM, Nintendo Official Magazine, industry publication MCV and others. He worked as head of content for the British Esports Federation up until February 2021, when he stepped back to work full-time on Esports News UK and offer esports consultancy and freelance services. Note: Dom still produces the British Esports newsletter on a freelance basis, so our coverage of British Esports is always kept simple – usually just covering the occasional press release – because of this conflict of interest.
