After a remarkable and protracted career, Lee “Carpe” Jae-hyeok, an era-defining Overwatch League star, is officially retiring from the game and joining the T1 VALORANT roster for the 2023 season in the VCT Pacific League.

Carpe leaves the Philadelphia Fusion, the team he has represented throughout all five OWL seasons, today to take on his “next challenge” of playing pro VALORANT for T1, an esports franchise owned by the same company that owns the Fusion. At the end of October, just a few days before Fusion were booted out of the 2022 OWL playoffs, reports of Carpe joining VALORANT first started to circulate.

He will play on T1 alongside Ha “Sayaplayer” Jung-woo (formerly of Florida Mayhem and The Guard VALORANT) and Byeon “Munchkin” Sang-beom, two other OWL veterans. All three will compete in the Asia’s Pacific League, which also includes a few other notable former OWL players like Patiphan “Patiphan” Chaiwong of Talon Esports and Park “Bazzi” Jun-ki of Global Esports.

Carpe described his five years with the Fusion as “truly precious, unforgettable, and honorable” and promised to always “root for this team forever” in his farewell video. Carpe was the only player to have played for the same team throughout all five seasons, making him one of the League’s longest-tenured players prior to today’s change.

He was the first OWL player to reach 4000 total final blows, and he received the Role Star award for DPS players in season three, according to Liquipedia. Sadly, during his five-year tenure, Carpe and the Fusion never took home the OWL Championship, but they did make it all the way to the championship round of the playoffs in their first season, and in 2018, he assisted Korea in winning the Overwatch World Cup.

Probably in February at the VCT 2023 Kickoff event in Sao Paulo, Brazil, Carpe will make his official VALORANT debut.