Royal Never Give Up (RNG) quits League of Legends

Jack Stewart, Senior Editor

Last Updated: 08/01/2026

Chinese esports organisation Royal Never Give Up (RNG) has left League of Legends esports after 15 years of competing.

Formerly known as Royal Club, RNG was one of the most storied and prestigious teams in LoL esports.

Now, the organisation has stepped down following a myriad of financial and legal issues.

Royal Never Give Up: A story of almosts

RNG will go down as one of the most iconic LoL teams ever, especially in China, as the organisation found a great deal of success.

In China, RNG won the LPL title five times and, at one tim,e was regularly the region’s best-performing team internationally.

RNG won three Mid-Season Invitational (MSI) titles, more than any other team has managed.

And RNG developed a lot of incredible players, including the legendary ADC Jian ‘Uzi’ Zihao.

Uzi was inducted into LoL’s “Hall of Legends” with his own skin line following on from Lee ‘Faker’ Sang-hyeuk’s ridiculous £400 bundle.

Other legendary players who played for RNG include Li ‘Xiaohu’ Yuan-Hao, Liu ‘Mlxg’ Shi-Yu, Cho ‘Mata’ Se-hyeong, and Choi ‘inSec’ In.

However, performance-wise, RNG will mostly be remembered for never quite winning the big one.

RNG (then Royal Club) reached the final of the LoL World Championships in 2013 but lost to SKT T1 and Faker.

They also reached the Worlds final in 2014, but lost to Samsung White.

After that, the organisation never made it that far in the prestigious event again, with a Worlds 2017 semi-final appearance their next-best result.

RNG had always been expected to be China’s first Worlds winners, but that milestone went to Invictus Gaming in 2018 instead.

Chinese organisations FunPlus Phoenix and Edward Gaming (EDG) have also both gone on to win Worlds titles.

Meanwhile, RNG has missed every major tournament event from 2023 onwards, despite winning MSI 2022 and attending Worlds 2022 as their last international.

Royal Never Give Up’s legal battles

As well as difficult results in LoL the last few years, RNG has also gotten caught up in various legal battles.

It began back in 2019 after breaking various contractual obligations with Douyu, a major Chinese streaming platform.

In 2020, the Wuhan Intermediate People’s Court ruled that RNG’s parent company,  LeYou Company, had to pay Doyou 30 million yuan (£3.2m) plus legal fees.

And since then, RNG has had legal battles with two of its greatest ever players.

Iconic jungler Mlxg retired from pro play in July 2019 and stayed under the RNG banner via a streaming contract with another streaming platform, Huya.

However, Mlxg allegedly spent more time on stock market manipulation than streaming and thus didn’t reach the contracted hours of streaming.

Chinese forums claim that Mlxg boasted on stream: “I made in a single day what I’d earn in a month from streaming.”

This led to Huya withholding payments from RNG, which then led Mlxg to sue his former organisation.

However, in 2025, the court ruled in RNG’s favour and demanded Mlxg to pay back 25 million yuan (£2.6m).

And it doesn’t end there eithe,r as Uzi is also in an ongoing legal battle with the organisation.

The legendary pro claims the organisation owes him a seven-figure sum (in yuan) of wages and has publically protested outside their offices.

Jack Stewart, Senior Editor

In my seven years of esports writing, I've introduced esports coverage to newspapers, interviewed some of the biggest names in the industry, and driven viewers mad with the puns in my YouTube scripts. I'm most proud of the latter.

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