Living Evil: Blind Eyes And Little Support

Continuing the series of an inside look at the Evil Geniuses organisation, this chapter focuses on the alleged lack of support for mental health of their staff and players.

The North American esports organisation Evil Geniuses triggered a spate of negative headlines In March after it was publicly revealed in a report on Dexerto that one of their young players, Kyle “Danny” Sakamaki, had been suffering from mental health problems and malnutrition during his time on their League of Legends team. The resulting outcry prompted calls for more awareness and proactivity from both the organisations that house players and Riot Games.

Following that we reached out to current and former Evil Geniuses employees at all levels of the company to interview them about their experiences and we found that almost all had complaints regarding being undermined, working conditions, workplace bullying and other issues. Our investigation uncovered that the organisation was currently being sued by one of its former star players for what they referred to as “fraud and deceit.” Alongside this multiple staff revealed how the organisation’s owners, Peak6 Capital, installed management without any esports experience that mistreated staff, made absolutely baffling business decisions, tanked the world’s number one CS:GO team, feigned ignorance about behavioural concerns of employees despite being forewarned and used the subsequent furor to usurp members of the former management team.

After the public revelations about Sakamaki’s health Evil Geniuses chose not to issue any statements. Instead, the matter seems to have been resolved through the concession of giving the former player a spot on the Evil Geniuses Creator Collective, the umbrella name for their streamers and content creators, with little more said about the matter. Internally EG’s CEO, Nicole Lapointe-Jameson, denied the allegations despite the reports having been corroborated by multiple journalists and Riot Games confirming they too were investigating the matter and had been before the reports in March.

While that alone paints a picture of the organisation’s lack of willingness to review its own practices, as part of the wider investigation into conditions at Evil Geniuses this publication has learned that this wasn’t the first time that their management had ignored warning signs surrounding their players.

In November of 2019 Evil Geniuses signed Bae "Bang" Jun-sik from LCS rivals 100 Thieves for an undisclosed fee. The player had moved to the US the previous year from SK Telecom T1 and had enjoyed a first season in the country without incident. However after joining Evil Geniuses the time away from his native South Korea started to take its toll and he began to succumb to what our sources characterised as “stress” and “extreme home sickness.”

“Maybe Evil Geniuses have just been unlucky” said one source who worked with the player “but to me it just didn’t feel like they’d made provisions to help someone who was the only Korean on the team adjust to that. In 100 Thieves he at least had a friend there. At this time with the pandemic travelling was also a big problem.”

Similar to the situation with Sakamaki many public tweets that should have been a cause for concern were either missed or ignored. On February 13^th 2020 he tweeted “depression is bad enough to kill people” . On March 25^th the player tweeted “I miss home” followed by another similar tweet just four days later that read “I wanna go home.” On October 7^th , after the LCS Summer Split had ended and players were in the off season, he tweeted “Stress doesn’t affect human health otherwise I had to be dead already.”

In another similarity to the Sakamaki case people within the organisation recall that Bae was also prevented from taking a break or planning a return to South Korea by EG management,

Source1: Bang was so unhappy during his time there and you could see it if you were around him in person. He just wanted to go back to Korea. He just wanted to be around friends and family and the amount of times Nicole said “no we have to push that back” or “no he has to play in this game…” They just don’t care about people’s mental health.

The situation came to a head when after losing a scrim the player lost control and threatened his opponents. The nature of the threat was considered extreme and the incident was reported to Riot Games who according to several of our sources advised Evil Geniuses to address the matter. No-one we interviewed could confirm if the player had been spoken to about this or referred to a mental health professional. Instead once the season was over a transfer back to South Korea was arranged.

This was a pattern that was not just repeated in League of Legends but also for their other teams. In November if 2022 the organisation made the decision to move its Dota 2 division to South America and picked up a predominantly Peruvian line-up. Although they enjoyed some modest success initially the new level of scrutiny combined with a language barrier when it came to communicating with management directly led to a significant increase in stress and by January the team had requested to speak with a mental health professional as the support they had received from EG staff had mostly been focused on diet and physical wellbeing.

Source7: In January the team requested a mental health professional or mental performance coach. This was sent to the highest levels of management but nothing happened. The team travelled to Lima and were disappointed with how things went so they made the request again in March. By that time the articles about Danny had gone public and the org didn’t want to risk any more criticism so they actually addressed it.

EG’s Raimbow 6 team in competition

Similar stories were told for the organisation’s Rainbow Six team. At the tail end of 2017 EG acquired the Continuum roster and 2018 saw them perform relatively well with a couple of notable second place finishes and prestigious tournaments. However after the Peak6 acquisition in 2019 pressure started mounting on the team to move to Seattle, pressure which the players eventually gave in to. Staff within EG recall that the team weren’t given a lot of support and many of the players complained about being homesick or not having enough money to undertake basic activities to break up the monotony of life in a new city.

Source1: Seattle’s a very expensive place to live and some players weren’t on good contracts to begin with so even with the stipend they’d be struggling. EG wanted them out there though so these guys went from being happy and comfortable at home to living in a city they could barely afford. Even after that when people were let go you’d just be stuck with a lease in Seattle so the problems last even after you’re out.

Source4: They had a lot of players that they basically pressured to move out to Seattle and then they were pretty much left on their own out there. Lots of them started getting homesick or were having other mental health issues and Nicole just didn’t give a shit. They would start performing badly and end up leaving EG and this happened all the time. They’d tell players it’d be great to move out there, they’ll get a stipend, everyone’s a big family but as soon as they got out there it was just a big shitshow.

Source2: The team were in apartments Evil Geniuses picked out for them and these were expensive apartments. When EG pulled out of the game they were just going to leave these guys stranded so there was a huge internal battle about getting the organisation to do the right thing and pay the remainder of their rent.

These revelations are a far cry from the public messaging that Evil Geniuses have engaged in. Much has been made in the press about the EG management containing staff that have a broad range of expertise from other industries, including the world of medicine. In a 2021 announcement that Lindsey “Gamerdoc” Migliore was joining as a “Wellness and Performance Consultant” the accompanying statement said “Health. Wellness. Success. We’re committed to these values.” The same year they announced a partnership with Healthy Gamer in which their new partners heralded EG’s “leadership in the mental health space” as “an example for the rest of the esports industry.”

The staff we interviewed though paint a very different picture. The documented high pressure environment combined with what they characterised as “workplace bullying” made it a unpleasant environment for those that worked there. Despite management saying they wanted to support those who were struggling, particularly during the pandemic and lockdown, the reality was very different.

Source1: People went to Nicole directly when they were struggling with mental health issues and she would say that it was OK to take time off but then you’d be asked to work while you were off work, to take things home with you. One staff member was on the spectrum and had a lot of diagnosed issues and the amount of times that was joked about in the workplace by Nicole and Jessica… You know they’d say things like “why can’t they just do the work” and they just seemed to really look down on anyone that couldn’t work in a way that they deemed to be “normal.”

Multiple former employees stated that the experience was so bad they had sought professional help and either received medication, therapy or a combination of both to deal with the aftermath. However, after communicating with one another and sharing experiences, the staff decided the best course of action was to speak out collectively lest the cycle continues.

Source1: Seeing all the stuff come out about Danny was the final straw when it came to holding out tongues I think. The fact that people are still being mistreated just makes it so you have to say something.