Evil Geniuses (EG), a Seattle-based American esports organization, has been functional since 1999. It specializes in fighting games like COD, CS: GO, DoTA2, Fortnite, League of Legends, Valorant, and more; having teams for each roster. Many professional gamers have come out of the organization such as SumaiL, Aleksandar, Fear, Arteezy, Danny, Keenc, Saahil, and more. Nonetheless, EG has faced a lot of controversy and backlash throughout the years as well. Examples could be SumaiL being on trial with EG, being gender-biased, making questionable roster moves, cutting the remuneration of the players by almost 50% due to management incompetency and so much more.
Despite being in the news most of the time, EG continued to pull through and has stuck around for more than two decades now but considering all that happened in 2023, it seems that this may be coming to an end. Note that this has less to do with the players lagging and more to do with decisions made by the organization’s management. 2023 has generally been a tough year for many e-sports organizations due to an economic bust.
One of the main things that makes us predict EG’s exit is a major layoff that was done earlier this month in the organization. Many contracts were terminated due to a downsizing which included the Vice President of Operations & Studio John Jung, Senior Director of Gaming & Performance Lindsey Migliore, the whole Valorant roster, the Dota 2 team, and support staff. As per sources, there may be more upcoming cuts as EG even plans to remove further teams, “They’ll plan to just stay in Riot titles” they explained, “so that means they’ll keep the men’s Counterstrike team until December and will likely cut the women’s teams before that.”
Apart from the downsizing, EG has also gone through a major financial restructuring which was also hinted at by one of their tweets. In his report, Richard Lewis states that it’s unforeseen whether EG will entirely liquidate or cut costs and strive through. With all this happening, EG continues to remain in the headlines for adverse media relating to staff complaints and community backlashes. Like many other e-sports organizations, EG also lost several sponsorships throughout the industry’s market correction. Earlier this year, EG announced its partnership with a cryptocurrency, Thunderpick.
However, EG is losing that too probably due to the Dota 2 team being laid off and the possibility of the CS team being dropped too. Richard Lewis reported about his sources informing them about the partnership being on ‘rocky ground’ now due to EG failing to meet some of the agreement clauses and continuous negative publicity. “When they partnered up it was with the belief that [the org] had four CS teams” a source familiar with the deal explained “but they dropped that down to two. They then added the Dota 2 team as a makeweight and now they have gone”. There is no official report out for EG losing Thunderpick as a sponsor as of yet, this is just an assumption for now.
With so much good in their portfolio and so much going on, one can only wish EG well for their future endeavours. Evil Geniuses has made headlines not just for negativity but also for good such as gaining recognition in the Dota 2 community during The International 2015, expanding to other e-sports titles when the time was right, bringing bring and new players from different communities. With all that’s going on in the e-sports industry correction, if EG liquidates then it really will be the end of an era for the gaming world.
