Website www.evilgeniuses.gg | ||
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Divisions Dota 2
Fighting games
Call of Duty
Halo Location San Francisco, California, United States Partners Monster Energy
xfinity
SteelSeries
SanDisk
AMD
SCUFGaming
DesignByHumans
NEEDforSEAT CEO Peter Dager (12 Dec 2016–) Founded 1999, United States of America Profiles | ||
Evil Geniuses (EG) is an eSports organization based in San Francisco. Founded in 1999, the organization fields players in various fighting games, Dota 2, League of Legends, StarCraft II, World of Warcraft, and Halo.
Contents
It was formerly a subsidiary of GoodGame Agency, which in turn was owned by Amazon.com through its division Twitch.
The Dota 2 squad won The International 2015, receiving one of the largest prize payouts in eSports history at the time.
History
Evil Geniuses was founded as a Counter-Strike team in Canada in 1999. Philadelphia native and future CEO Alex Garfield started working for the team in 2004.
Evil Geniuses acquired a Defense of the Ancients (Dota) roster on April 12, 2008, made up of players transferring from team eMg. EG entered the StarCraft: Brood War scene on April 25, 2009, with the recruitment of World Cyber Games USA champions Geoff "iNcontroL" Robinson, and Dan "Nyoken" Eidson, along with Eric "G5" Rothmuller, Jake "LzGaMeR" Winstead, and Bryce "Machine" Bates. EG saw its North American DotA squad depart on December 3, 2009, following two months of minimal practice and insufficient exposure.
Evil Geniuses expanded into StarCraft II during the game's launch year of 2010 with the recruitment of top American player Gregory "IdrA" Fields as well as the well-known commentator and player Nick "Tasteless" Plott on September 9. In a controversial move, EG acquired the brand of fellow North American gaming organization, Loaded, on October 9, 2010, but the deal only constituted the company sponsors, team owner and their Heroes of Newerth squad.
In 2010, EG expanded into fighting games by signing Justin Wong and Martin "Marn" Phan. Within a year, they expanded their fighting game division with the addition of Ricki Ortiz, Ari "fLoE" Weintraub, and Eduardo "PR Balrog" Perez-Frangie, as well as Japanese players Yusuke Momochi, and Yuka "Chocoblanka" Kusachi. Marn was eventually let go in 2011 at his own request, with the intention to start his own League of Legends team, Team MRN.
On March 31, 2011, long-time member Manuel "Grubby" Schenkhuizen, as well as StarCraft II division manager Nick "Tasteless" Plott departed from the organization. EG lost its Heroes of Newerth squad on July 8 to SK Gaming, due to sponsorship complications. Near the end of that month, the Korean North American Star League champion, Ho Joon "PuMa" Lee, joined up with EG, despite the lack of consultancy with his previous organization. Three weeks later, the top Canadian player, Chris "HuK" Loranger, left his long-time organization of Team Liquid, and joined EG, to compete alongside Fields and Lee in South Korea. On October 21, it was announced that the trio would be moving to stay with the South Korean team SlayerS, in accordance with a correlating partnership established between the organizations. EG saw the return of two former DotA players, Clinton "Fear" Loomis and Jimmy "DeMoN" Ho, with the acquisition of their first Dota 2 squad.
On January 7, 2012, EG announced the dismissal of its long-standing Counter-Strike squad. In September 2012, Bulba and xHobbzeEx left the Dota 2 team due to personal issues and were replaced by Jio "Jeyo" Madayag and Robert "bdiz" Tinnes. On December 5, 2012, EG signed the successful StarCraft: Brood War Zerg player Lee Jae-Dong. On January 25, 2013, EG announced their expansion into League of Legends with the signing of the former Counter Logic Gaming European division – in negotiations that reportedly spanned three months, however the team would later disband due to extremely poor results.
On April 4, 2014, EG announced that they had signed fighting game player Kenneth "K-Brad" Bradley. Prior to this, Ari "fLoE" Weintraub had been let go from the team.
On October 27, 2014, it was announced that three players from the Evil Geniuses Call of Duty squad, Patrick "Aches" Price, Ian "Crimsix" Porter, and Ken Dedo, had left the organisation, later joining OpTic Gaming. The CEO of EG, Alex Garfield confirmed via reddit that he had indeed let three of the players go to OpTic.
On November 21, 2014, Evil Geniuses announced the launch of its first Halo squad, consisting of the twins Jason "Lunchbox" Brown and Justin "Roy" Brown, the 2014 Halo 4 World Championship finalist Justin "iGotUrPistola" Deese and the Eric "Snip3down" Wrona, who is reckoned among the best slayers in the world. The team competed in the Halo Championship Series Season 1 and won 3 online cups to this point. On December 21 iGotUrPistola left the squad due to an injury. He was replaced by Tony "LxthuL" Campbell transferring from the BTH.
On December 9, 2014, Evil Geniuses' parent organisation, GoodGame Agency announced that it had been acquired by Twitch.
On December 16, 2014, Evil Geniuses' Yusuke Momochi won the 2014 Capcom Cup tournament. Momochi has qualified for the event by winning South East Asia Major 2014 in Singapore. This win automatically granted him entry into Capcom Cup 2015. On July 19, 2015, Yusuke Momochi won Evolution 2015, taking the win from AVerMedia's Bruce "Gamerbee" Hsiang in a controversial Grand Finals set that saw Momochi suffer from hardware failure with his Razer arcade stick.
On December 12, 2016, Evil Geniuses along with Alliance became player-owned organizations. It was later confirmed that American Dota 2 player Peter "ppd" Dager was named CEO of Evil Geniuses.
At the beginning of 2017, ppd announced lineup switches for the fighting game and StarCraft II divisions. PR Balrog, Justin Wong, Momochi, and ChocoBlanka would depart from the FGC division; Ricki Ortiz, PPMD, and K-Brad would be kept while adding NYChrisG to the team. In addition, ppd announced that their SC2 division would be disbanding as InControL and HuK were either producing poor results in competition or not competing.
Dota 2
EG acquired Kurtis "Aui_2000" Ling from C9 in December 2014.
On August 8, 2015, Evil Geniuses beat CDEC Gaming to win The International 2015, securing a first-time championship and winning a total of $6,616,014, which was one the largest purse ever awarded in eSports, as well as becoming the first American team to win the event.
On August 14, Aui_2000 was kicked off of the team. Former member Artour "Arteezy" Babaev replaced him on the roster.
EG finished third at both the Frankfurt Major 2015 and the Shanghai Major 2016. On March 22, Arteezy and UNiVeRsE left the team to join Team Secret. On March 25, EG announced that former members Aui_2000 and Bulba would rejoin the roster to fill these vacancies.
EG got 3rd at The International 2016. After the tournament the team released ppd and Fear, who both decided to retire from playing Dota 2 to pursue other opportunities within the organization. They were replaced by Andreas Franck "Cr1t-" Nielsen, who would go on to become the new captain, and Arteezy.