Evil Geniuses shut down after 27 years: "The business cannot be operated responsibly"
Evil Geniuses, one of the longest-running organisations in esports, has announced it is closing. The club will end its competitive and day-to-day operations on 2 November, it said on the evening of 20 October.
The reasons
CEO Chris DeAppolonio pointed to two causes: limited sponsorship and the rising cost of competing at the top level. In its statement, the organisation said it had stabilised operations, restored public sentiment and grown its reach in recent years, but concluded that the business cannot be operated responsibly in the current environment.
All players on its rosters, including its VALORANT squad, are free to talk to other organisations, in that case once the season ends on 2 November.
Two eras in Counter-Strike
Founded in 1999 and winners of Dota 2's The International in 2015, EG had an on-and-off relationship with Counter-Strike. Its first era was in 1.6, with players such as n0thing, fRoD and Warden, and ended when it left the game in 2012.
The second began in 2019, after the PEAK6 group acquired the brand. EG returned by signing the NRG roster, then fourth in the world: stanislaw, tarik, Brehze, Ethan and CeRq. That same year it won ESL One New York and StarSeries Season 8, and in September 2020 it reached number one in the HLTV ranking.
The decline came quickly. Ethan left for VALORANT, the team dropped out of the top 30 in September 2021, and the 2022 project, built around a fifteen-player roster, failed to deliver and damaged the brand's reputation. EG left Counter-Strike for a second time in January 2024, so the closure doesn't affect any current team in the game.
A sign of the industry's moment
The news adds to others that show how difficult the landscape is. Brehze and CeRq, two of the players who took EG to the top, now compete for Without a Roof, a team that publicly announced earlier this month that it was looking for an organisation to represent it.
Source: HLTV, Evil Geniuses, esports.gg, Dot Esports.