Evil Geniuses are an organisation who are very well known throughout multiple Esports where they have success through games such as CS-GO, DOTA, League of Legends and especially Valorant.
With Evil Geniuses most recent success in Valorant after winning the Champions in Los Angeles, they quickly announced that they weren’t giving their players a chance to explore options as they were lowering their salary by a substantial amount and rejecting massive amounts from teams.
There were rumours of NRG Esports offering $100,000 for the purchase of Demon1 and Ethan from the EG team and it was instantly rejected by EG fans were thinking because of the current financial situation happening in Esports.
The exit of Evil Geniuses is something that fans have been asking for since the end of Champions 2023 where EG announced they were going to give their players severe pay cuts and holding them in, what fans are calling, contract jail. This means that players such as Demon1, Ethan and Boostio who are massive players which are being looked at by other teams in the league, cannot leave without a ridiculous payout clause added to them.
What this means for VCT 2024
Riot have made it very clear that for their Valorant VCT system, to be accepted into the partnership system, the organisations were assessed on not just their Valorant success but also their organisation and how it is ran.
For example, OPTIC Gaming were very well respected in the Valorant scene as one of, if not the best Valorant team of 2022 with superstars such as yay and Marved starring in the team. OPTIC didn’t make it into franchising however, despite their success in winning Masters and coming 2nd place at Champions and, though never confirmed, this was due to the organisation rather than the players.
Another case of this was G2 Esports who are currently in the VCT Americas league, were originally denied due to the owner, Carlos partying with Andrew Tate which caused an uproar in fans online leading to Riot revoking their VCT partnership and making them play through Ascension to reach VCT.
Seeing that EG are holding their players in ”Contract Jail” and refusing to pay their players an amount reasonable for Champions winners, it is doubtful that Riot are happy with the current state of Valorant.
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