Living Evil: Covid, Counter-Strike And An Unnecessary Rebranding

Continuing the behind the scenes look at Evil Geniuses, as told by the people who were there.

The changeover from 2019 to 2020 saw the arrival of the Covid-19 global pandemic, with governments and businesses alike scrambling to make decisions that balanced safety with job security. Adapting to the risks and challenges posed by the pandemic was difficult and Evil Geniuses had to make a lot of changes only six months in to their restructuring. A few weeks after the pandemic had started to spread across America they took the decision to have staff work remotely as part of a quarantining measure. This was increasingly becoming standard practice all over the world, especially for jobs that realistically only required internet access. However, what very quickly became apparent to staff was that if the EG management needed something they would be willing to dispense with safety protocols in order to get whatever it was over the line. 

Source1: When Covid first broke out there was a period of about three to four weeks before the decision was made for everyone to start quarantining and working from home. During this time they insisted that a member of staff come in and the staff member objected saying ‘what about Covid?’ Management were like ‘we don’t fucking care, you’ll be fine” and then that staff member ended up getting Covid.

Several staff members interviewed recalled being requested to come into the office during a time when they’d also been explicitly told to quarantine. At this time the details about the virus were still largely unknown and the general advice was to avoid any unnecessary gatherings. However, equally people didn’t want to jeopardise their employment by refusing requests for in person appearances, especially after having been told that the arrival of Jessica Hammond from Peak6 was a harbinger for incoming job cuts. Many of the staff had been specifically told to move to Seattle and some were even on US work visas. The prospect of joblessness meant more than just missing out on rent and Evil Geniuses were more than aware of that power dynamic.

Source2: It was worse for staff who were there on work visas because anyone who quit would have had to leave the country in the middle of Covid.

Not even players and coaches were spared risk to their health. While the world of esports pivoted back to online competitions this still created continental divides due to the limitations of internet connectivity. The CS:GO team, which had enjoyed an initial period of success since the Peak6 takeover, was sent to Serbia so they could continue to meet their playing obligations during this time. Assurances were made to players and support staff that as much risk would be mitigated as possible but they found that travel and living arrangements were below what was promised. When the players invariably got ill the management, in their typical corporate American fashion, were worried about liability and so, as multiple sources recall, everyone potentially affected was sent a form to sign that would absolve EG of any responsibility. This was of course done retroactively. As one source recalled:

Source8: During COVID, in the middle of the pandemic, they sent the CS:GO team to Serbia, where no one wore a mask, and then had them retroactively sign terms like they had instructed them to take safety measures from the beginning. That’s bullshit. They put the team in that position and basically the players all got COVID from it because they skimped on paying for good accommodation and other basic things. It took them a while to fix the accommodation situation but they did in the end just too late.

Source3: That form was sent out to every player trying to travel even if they had already travelled without signing it.

Source2: It was basically a form saying that ‘we’re voluntarily going and if anything happens to us relating to Covid it’s not the company’s fault’

Source3: That came direct from Jessica.

Several of the interviewees recall people going through similar experiences of having protocols ignored and people asked to come into the office. However after the threat of potential litigation suddenly new measures were implemented in the office. The aforementioned form was distributed to everyone who had travel required as part of their job, quarantine was more strictly adhered to and a temperature monitor was installed at the office entrance.

The Counter-Strike Team

Now, in regards to that initially successful Counter-Strike team… The drop off in quality and competitiveness is actually staggering and through each iteration and roster the team has got progressively worse until the point it is at now. For context during the so-called “Covid Era” where Counter-Strike reverted to mostly online competition the team was, according to HLTV.org, the number one ranked team in the world as of September 28^th 2020. Fast forward to the current day and the team failed to qualify for the CS:GO Major in Paris, finishing 9^th-12^th at a qualifier they had initial failed to qualify to, being added as a last minute replacement for a team that could not field a roster.

Obviously things didn’t get like this overnight and one of the interviewees had a detailed knowledge of the CS:GO team’s history. They gave their perspective on where they thought the wheels started to come off and set the team down this path.

Source8: What happened with that 2020 CS:GO team was very frustrating. The team had been left alone and enjoyed some early success but then Nicole decided to change how everything was managed. She put Greg [Kim] and Andrew [Barton] in charge of all esports divisions and so the team’s staff now had to report to them and that’s where it started to go downhill. They thought the entire esports world functioned under the rules of league of legends and for CS:GO they had no idea it was the wild west. EG were #1 in the world rankings in the Covid era and right before player break there was a call from Team Liquid as a courtesy letting the coaching staff know that on the other line they were buying out the contracts of Brehze [Vincent "Brehze" Cayonte] and Cerq [Tsvetelin "CeRq" Dimitrov] for 750K as was in their contract.

After that call the coach [Wilton "zews" Prado ] got the team together and persuaded them to stay based on their friendship as that core of players had always played together. It also helped that EG were better than Liquid at that point. The players also understood that they could negotiate with EG should they choose to stay. Greg, Andrew and Nicole agreed to some new terms verbally but they took 3 months to draft everything. This put a lot of stress on the players and team as they felt they had given up going to the "all star" team merging Liquid and EG and were being made fools by the organization.

There was a lot of pettiness in the negotiations as well, haggling over things like flights and giving a fair salary to the team manager and the super high buyouts, which at one point was suggested to be $2.2 million for each of the players. After three months everyone agreed on the new deal but now things had taken so long that Tarik [Tarik "tarik" Celik] decided not to sign as he was unsure if he was going to become a streamer or keep playing. All this time of negotiating, plus potentially losing a big personality on the team, just made it a stressful situation and that was one of the factors in which we stopped performing as well due to a lack of focus.

Now with Tarik possibly on his way out things were going from bad to worse because now the players that didn't go to the dream team, stayed behind because of friendship, and that friend was possibly retiring. It was the opinion of the coach that EG needed to remedy that situation fast and get someone that was sure they wanted to be there. At the time NAF [Keith "NAF" Markovic] had asked about joining EG and there were some discussions about a potential trade of Tarik for NAF. EG management said that because they had just renegotiated they now couldn't spend another cent. Ethan [Ethan "Ethan" Arnold] lost his will to play from all this drama and just decided it wasn't worth it anymore and would switch to Valorant.

It’s worth noting that at the end of 2021 Markovic would again express an interest in joining Evil Geniuses due to a disagreement with the direction of Team Liquid at that time. In an interview with Counter-Strike analyst Alex “⁠Mauisnake⁠” Ellenberg the player would say the following:

“[Talking to EG], that was some of the worst management I think I have ever talked to probably in my life. Not to be too blunt about it. EG surely knows that as well. They’re clearly not handling their team properly at all and me talking to them for about an hour changed my mind.”

Source8: All while this was going on Greg and Andrew were playing war games with each other to see who was going to become GM for Nicole and Greg was the one that got fired. Didn't change much as the shitshow continued and it was still Andrew, a League of Legends person that was now general manager for the organization running the show and not allowing anything to be done in CS. All player signings were shut down and the team’s work ethic started to take a hit. Tarik finally quit and they had to recruit players as cheaply as possible even though they’d had a big buyout from selling Ethan to 100 Thieves. They paid all this money then didn't even put in the effort needed to actually keep their investment in CS:GO healthy. Andrew basically started to run the team and completely went over the coach’s head multiple times. Zews quit not long after that.

While this is all probably the least of the Peak6 era’s issues it underlines the issues with management not understanding the lay of the land in their respected fields. This is something that would become a recurring issue over the course of Evil Geniuses decline and ultimately contributed towards many of the more negative stories emanating from the organisation. The new management and the hires they approved of were considered de facto experts in anything they tried their hand to, even when it came to marketing and brand design.

THE REBRAND

Source1: Nicole kept saying we had to rebrand so she could make this HER company and that she didn’t like the “bowling ball” which is what she called the traditional EG logo.

Not long after the Peak6 takeover Nicole LaPointe Jameson started to obsess over rebranding the organisation. By all accounts this was due to her wanting to make her stamp on the organisation and also because she believed the logo alone would prevent sponsors from signing up. While the existing management didn’t object to a fresh design they had all made it clear that they wanted anything new to still be recognisable as connected to the history of the organisation. That wasn’t to Nicole’s liking who, despite their being staff at the company who were employed specifically for projects such as this.

Source1: For the first rebrand Nicole just came in and pushed Kevin, the creative director, to one side and they brought in a third party company and then didn’t consult with most of the management. As you know it fucking tanked and the fall guy for that was Kevin.

Initially Nicole was open to a collaboration with others, just not her own people. Wanting something “fresh” she initially consulted with the ØPUS Agency to not just come up with a logo but also a new concept for the EG brand as a whole. She was adamant about working in the phrase “Live Evil” despite reservations not only from EG staff but even the agency she was working with. When the disagreements came in the relationship was terminated somewhat abruptly.

Source4: Nicole had connected with OPUS united in order to go ahead with the first rebrand in 2019. We could and should have made magic with them but didn't cause her ego got in the way. she got into fights quite frequently with OPUS. She was the project lead basically. The biggest fights they had were over creative direction: OPUS had gotten the green light for the logo, merchandise and apparel strategy from Nicole only to then have her come back and tell them that all the work they've done weas useless and not at all what she had approved. She told the OPUS team that they don't understand esports.

Source6: They had an extended meeting with a design agency that was like, the genesis of "live evil", and I remember people like vehemently arguing that you can't force "being a wrestling heel" because the results aren't planned. You can't do things like promote social causes while the image you're building of yourself is evil. EG could do that at one point because our reputation was "They have money, most teams don't, they poach players, and those players win." You can't back up that "Evil Genius" image if you aren't winning.

Source1: There was a lot of exercises we had to go through before the rebranding to figure out what is the future of Evil Geniuses. During these meetings Nicole would choose these things and say things that just didn’t feel accurate and if anyone disagreed she would be like “this is my company, I don’t care what anyone else thinks.” There was a lot of that.

In the end, despite internal objections, Evil Geniuses rolled out their new logo, which wasn’t really a logo at all, rather just the words “Evil” and “Geniuses” placed on top of each other with the V spiking down to obscure part of the word “Geniuses.” What wasn’t known to the public was that the design concept had been pushed out by LaPointe Jameson, the “Live Evil” tagline and all.

The public reaction was widespread ridicule. Other esports organisations used it as an opportunity to dunk on one of the rivals, many posting childlike drawings of their own logos or just having simple writing on a page.

The founder, no longer at the company, Alex Garfield replied with a simple “what the fuck is this?”

LaPointe Jameson was reputedly seething at the reaction to her ideas.

Source6: I was told that the reasoning for the logo change was that non-endemics wouldn't work with us if we had the “puck” and it might've just been the excuse. The first rebrand logo was literally like, a rough design that I think they just chose to get away from the puck ASAP. I have no idea if that's true but I know the original logo wasn't meant to be like, "what we were going with.”

While internally it was the creative team that was lambasted for the reaction publicly it was Philip Aram who had to fall on the metaphorical grenade and try and win over some hearts and minds. “When we rolled out something that took you by surprise in a way that had everything to do with what was missing and not what was unveiled” he tweeted, “I’m super proud of what we unveiled for the record. I stand for it so hard, and our team is excited to tell new stories with this look & feel… I’m sorry we gave you and all the fans a heart attack, but to be totally clear the crest is coming back.”

This was the start of yet another rebranding process, this time with more input from the management that had longer standing connections to Evil Geniuses. Several new logos were created and then the view was to take a vote from people within the company as to which was best.

Source4: When we had to make the new “new” logo Nicole was presented a list of ideas and picked the one that, let’s say, wasn’t the best and the only reason we didn’t go with that one is they polled the entire company about which one they thought was best and almost everyone picked the one they now have. Nicole was really mad about that.

Still convinced that the initial rebrand was an improvement and that it was the esports community that was somehow stuck in the past, the Peak6 management team insisted that the rebrand rolled out with an explainer as to why it was good. “The circular shape provides a representation to one of our core values, inclusivity, achieving a modern and functional design” it said. Who knew circles were so deep?

The next part will follow next week.