The esports team is making changes throughout their organization that may not be as genius as they hoped.
The business of esports is ever changing. Some organizations find themselves making changes to rosters, others making changes at the business level, including layoffs and ownership changes. According to Esports Insider, 100 Thieves just laid off many of their employees due to economic changes in the industry. The Verge reports that the layoffs accounted for 20 percent of the company’s employees. President and COO of 100 Thieves John Robinson talked about the changes on his X (formerly Twitter), bringing some transparency to the layoffs.
But one organization has been at the forefront of a multitude of changes over the last few months. Evil Geniuses (EG), an organization who lives by moniker “live evil, be genius,” has left a lot of esports fans scratching their heads over choices they’ve made throughout the scene.
According to One Esports, after winning Valorant Champions 2023, players were told two weeks later that they could explore other options for teams, and if they decide to stay with EG, they would be subjected to pay cuts. A few players reacted to this with cryptic posts on X (formally Twitter), but after searching through updated news about this team, as well as the social accounts of the players, no moves have been made to the core roster.
However, EG did confirm that they would be letting go all but one of their Valorant reserve roster members.
On November 1, the day before 100 Thieves reported their layoffs, news started to circulate that Evil Geniuses also experienced layoffs. According to Dexerto, Vice President of Operations and Studio John Jung announced his layoff on his X account, and another now former employee who goes by Beora claims that around 20 people were laid off. As of this time, EG has yet to announce any of these layoffs.
And on November 3, according to Strafe Esports, the social manager for EG’s DOTA 2 team posted that the team would not be returning to Evil Geniuses in the next season. The team’s social media accounts still haven’t announced this move, but their assistant coach has also confirmed to his X account that EG will not be fielding a DOTA 2 team next season.
In the middle of all of these moves came the most confusing one of all, which had the Rocket League community in an uproar.
On October 12, a Rocket League content creator named Elsye “herculyse” Herrera had posted on X that she had been dropped by Evil Geniuses as a creator. According to Dot Esports, Herrera was running Rocket League tournaments for the organization. EG told her that the series had lost their sponsors and partnerships, therefore the last of the events were cancelled.
On October 25, Evil Geniuses posted on X that they would be running a Rocket League tournament, with sponsors, something they claimed they didn’t have just weeks before. The Rocket League community and the esports community as a whole were in arms over the move.
The post has since been removed, and Evil Geniuses’ Challenger Mode profile no longer shows any tournaments that are upcoming. But members of the esports community are still questioning Evil Geniuses choices, especially with the recent layoffs still being unannounced, even as they actively run a League of Legends event.
With all of these recent moves, many esports enthusiasts feel that Evil Geniuses have leaned heavily into living evil, but the lack of transparency over the decisions they’ve been making prove to be less than genius.
Update Nov 7, 2023: According to Dust2.us, Evil Geniuses is looking to drop their Counter-Strike teams to focus on Riot owned titles (Valorant and League of Legends). All of this happening at the same time that the EG CS2 squad played in a Challengers League match up tonight.
These decisions still have yet to be announced by the organization.
Header image credit Evil Geniuses.
The Spawn Room 
[…] as a commentator and tournament organizer. She was previously part of Evil Geniuses, which we reported on back in November when she was let go from the […]
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