Another week, and another endemic esports organisation has left the Overwatch scene as Evil Geniuses announced a split with their roster, although this time at least it was a team related excuse given when team and company decided to go their own way. Against a backdrop of large orgs saying that Blizzard have forced them out by withholding information, it must be nice for the Overwatch makers to see a good old ‘team synergy’ reason trotted out for this move.
The team was made up of Justin ‘Kayuun’ Ha, Lucas ‘Peebimitsu’ Nettesheim, Anthony ‘Goliath’ Pietro, Elijah ‘Elkiea’ Gallagher, Corey ‘Corey’ Nigra and Carlo ‘Dcop’ Delsol, who will now be looking for new organisations, presumably not as a unit. A statement on the Evil Geniuses site said that ‘…players within the team felt that their synergy was not what it needed to be in order to progress, and requested their release.’ The statement continued to say that EG are committed to Overwatch as a game still, albeit with more than a hint of qualification, rather than a full on commitment in the short term.
PPD interviews the OW roster in happier times
To clarify, the group said that ‘As a team, Evil Geniuses would like to stress that this is not the end of our interest in competitive Overwatch, and we will be looking on to how the scene continues to develop.’ Like in the case of many endemics, the key word seems to be ‘develops’, with competitive Overwatch in its current state not really suitable for teams to profit off, or gain reputation capital in the case of the smaller outfits.
At this point it doesn’t look like EG will be replacing their team in the short term, and whether they are waiting on Overwatch League news to inform their next step seems to be a question for the future too. However, in the most basic terms this is just one more team choosing to step away from Blizzard’s new flagship, when we were expecting the game to be taking off by now, if not soaring.
Images courtesy of EG
