Living Evil: Unearthed Bodies And Sacrificial Lambs

The third part of the behind the scenes look at Evil Geniuses from the perspective of the people who were there

Grant “GrandGrant” Harris admitted guilt when it came to harassment

On June 21^st 2020 allegations of sexual misconduct were made against Dota 2 commentator and Evil Geniuses streamer Grant “GrandGrant” Harris. Initially he had not been named in the comments made by a Twitter user but then later was specifically outed as someone who had been sexually aggressive towards someone during their attendance at an event. After the allegations gained traction across social media Harris apologised to the victim but then further allegations were made.

A former Dota 2 coach Anthony “scant” Hodgson published a series of tweets that detailed harassment received by another female commentator, actions he said were enough to for her to seek a restraining order. “[The] Most notable case we know about is LlamaDownUnder” he wrote. “She was a fast-rising Dota 2 caster. And then she wasn’t. Grant did that. Grant repeatedly harassed Llama to the point where she sought a restraining order. She took him to court, and after several years of protracted legal proceedings, the court found that Grant did indeed harass and defame her. He bullied her, harassed her, and he ended her job.”

As more and more people started to come forward with their own experiences it was clear that his position in the industry was untenable. After a brief apology Evil Geniuses announced that they would be terminating his contract although somewhat bizarrely seemed to be focused not so much on the substance of the allegations but rather how they related to their new company handbook. “Effective immediately, Grant "GranDgranT" Harris has been released and is no longer a member of Evil Geniuses. We have a zero-tolerance workplace policy, and take any accusation of harassment, or a violation of our policies handbook, seriously.”

Many esports fans were shocked by the revelations but increasingly it became clear that several who worked in the space were aware of the existence of the allegations and legal action taken against Harris. The new owners of Evil Geniuses certainly gave that impression with their public statements however the employees we interviewed stated that management were explicitly made aware of “rumours” about Harris when they came in to the company. These included his history of substance abuse, drunken behaviour on stream including allegations of brandishing a firearm and the aforementioned harassment lawsuit. Despite this they made the decision to keep him on as a streamer and representative of the organisation.

Source2: When Peak6 came in staff drafted up a document that basically outlined what all the skeletons in the closet were. Players who had done or said things, rumours that were circulating about GranDGranT and so on. They knew about all these things at the point of acquisition.

Source6: During the transition from indie EG to Peak6 we put together a spreadsheet of each player, mostly from a marketing perspective. For example, listing each player from [team] in a row in a spreadsheet, going "here's their follower count" but also saying "This is how they post, what they post, whether they're an asset for the marketing side of things." This wasn't explicitly for the HR side of things; I think this was because we were going into meetings with a marketing agency, and we thought "okay, is this something that'd be useful for the new people coming in (Nicole, HR, etc)." That spreadsheet also didn't explicitly have a "skeletons" column, but basically used that "Here's how they post" column in order to talk about that kind of "here's our assets with social, but also our liabilities." So like, for example, s4 from the Dota team (at the time) didn't post at all, Arteezy's lack of capitals, etc. But it was also being like "Okay, ChrisG has this incident years ago, it went away quietly, but it can present something in the future." This was specifically done for GrandGrant and ChrisG.”

The “ChrisG incident” refers to their former Fighting Games competitor Christopher "NYChrisG" Gonzalez. In 2017 comments Gonzalez made on Facebook (https://blackgirlnerds.com/evilgeniuses-nychrisgs-comments-show-misogynoir-still-part-fighting-game-community/) were amplified on social media leading to him being accused of racism and misogyny. He had apologised at the time and the incident wasn’t any great secret but the incident involving Harris, although unrelated to the behaviour of Gonzalez, was the final push management needed in order to make the decision to remove him from the organisation. The day after the Harris announcement they followed it up with a similar statement regarding Gonzalez saying “We at EG value each member of our community, and have zero tolerance for harassment. After investigation, it was evident that Chris’ statements, though made in 2017, continue to have real, harmful impact in our community.”

Chris “NYChrisG" Gonzalez representing Evil Geniuses

Again, multiple sources we interviewed confirmed that Peak6 were aware of the incident in the past and still made the decision to keep the player on their books, despite later using the same incident they were aware of as the excuse to remove him from the roster.

Gonzalez, who has long publicly aired his grievance against the Evil Geniuses management who released him, was furious at the decision after having been forced to move to Seattle as part of a company wide edict to cut costs.

Source9: Chris lived in California which had just passed minimum wage laws that was going to cause a salary bump that would mean he was going to have to get paid close to $10,000 more a year. He was told if he didn’t move to Seattle then EG couldn’t keep employing him.

At the time he expressed disbelief at being penalised for an incident that, as far as he was concerned, had been dealt with.

“EG really throwing me under the bus like that....... AFTER EVERYTHING!!!” he tweeted. “They knew what I said, and that I regretted it. I told them day 1 when I posted it that I really messed up. And they told me that they would help me get through it all. THEY FORCED ME TO MOVE TO SEATTLE..... I was told multiple times that eg was happy with how I was doing. I was told mutiple times when I asked them if I was gonna get dropped for the things that Ive done. I KNOW WHAT I DID, AND IVE BEEN SORRY SINCE DAY 1. They said NO, I was family, and that I wasnt going anywhere.”

Phillip Aram posing with Nicole LaPointe Jameson

However Gonzalez wasn’t the only person that was effectively removed during this time. According to people who worked their at the time the new EG CEO Nicole LaPointe Jameson identified an opportunity to remove the COO Phillip Aram as well. Employees recalled that she had taken issue with Aram as he would often challenge some of her suggestions and methods in meetings and was one of the few voices within the organisation that felt confident enough to push back. As both Harris and Gonzalez were hired in 2017 but were generating the negative headlines in the here and now it presented an opportunity to lay claims of incompetence on the previous management that had brought the individuals into the fold in the first place.

The new management wanted to conduct an investigation as to whether the old management had adhered to protocols, overlooking the fact that they themselves had elected to turn a blind eye to the issues surrounding the EG members they had just released. As Aram was the most senior of the old guard he was placed on leave while the investigation took place. Internally this was framed as just being normal procedure but many employees felt this was a powerplay from Nicole to remove someone she no longer felt was an ally.

Source2: From the moment Peak6 came in Nicole wanted to be the top dog and the one calling the shots and Phillip would be the one to challenge her. Nicole and Jessica didn’t like that so when the GrandGrant story came out they put it all on Philip and placed him on leave for like six months. Finally, because he had equity in the company, they got rid of him for good in December that year. After that, without Phil in the staff’s corner, things got worse.

Source8: Nicole didn’t just want to be the star and be on camera more than the players at this time, she wanted everyone to understand that all the success that she believed was going to happen was all her doing. She really didn’t like any of the old management being around, especially if they were known to the public. She didn’t want to share the credit with them.

Others believe that LaPointe Jameson was only following the lead of Jessica Hammond who had joined from Peak6 initially to head up human resources but was now operating company wide under the title of Chief Culture Officer.

Source9: Jessica is a fucking scourge on Earth. She’s the catalyst for these changes. Before she arrived the HR person was super compassionate and tried to solve internal issues by approaching people directly and talking things out to help them be at their best. Jessica’s attitude was totally different. If someone wasn’t performing she would say… Almost like 1984 shit, we’ve always been at war with Eurasia… This person has always been a problem. She coached managers on the process of how to manage people out the company. She even changed the hiring culture. Her idea was to hire people who had been fired in a previous job so they’d take less money but also do anything to not get fired again. She turned everyone into being super fearful.

Either way, the investigation into the company protocols had essentially turned into an operation to place the blame for the behaviour of Harris and Gonzalez at Aram’s doorstep. What should have only taken a few weeks dragged on for months all the while Aram wasn’t allowed to communicate with staff during his leave period. During this time the new management were able to push through many of the ideas that Aram had been resistant to.

Source1: Within EG there was an inner circle and an outer circle and if you were on the outs you didn’t get told anything, which impacted on your ability to work. Multiple teams were left in the dark about what was happening with Phil for example all through that six months.

Source4: It got to the stage where we had to submit anonymous questions asking “what’s happening to Phil” on the company system and then finally just before he was let go they told us that was coming.

At this time Peak6 were looking to raise money from investors and had entered into talks with the Fosun Sports Group. The management decided it would be best during this time to keep Aram on leave and as the talks dragged out so did his time away from the company. By the time the short term leave had become long term the negotiations around his return were now how he would leave the company. Sources familiar with these negotiations say that they were drawn out due to Aram’s equity ownership. In the end, despite his “leave” having started in June 2020 the official announcement of Aram’s departure wasn’t made until December the same year.

With the most senior member of the pre-Peak6 management no longer at the company, many said this was the tipping point of when the work environment shifted from challenging to unbearable.

Source2: I would have left Evil Geniuses a lot sooner had it not been for Covid because a lot of us just felt stuck there. We weren’t just stuck in an environment that wasn’t fun to work in but one where we felt we had to all be absolutely perfect or our head was on the chopping block.

The next chapter in the series will focus on the working environment at Evil Geniuses and their handling of mental health issues.