Evil Geniuses to Compete at EWC, But Won’t Promote It

Evil Geniuses (EG), a North American esports team, has announced that while it will participate in the Esports World Cup, it won’t promote the tournament or provide coverage of its matches on its official social media accounts. 

Evil Geniuses X Statement 

The esports team took to X to inform fans about their intentions regarding the Esports World Cup, which will take place in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. 

“Our competitive outcome in Stage 1 auto-qualified our VCT Americas team for Phase 2 of the EWC VALORANT Online Qualifier.

“Opportunities to compete at the Tier 1 level are extremely limited, and the more time we have to compete against the best, the better our chances of qualifying for Champions 2025. We have strived to build a community of fans that reflect our internal values, and we recognize that this decision may not align with those expectations.

“With competition as the core of our business, we’ve decided to support our team’s participation in EWC from a competitive standpoint only — EG Social channels will not be covering, mentioning, or giving updates on EWC-related matches or content and will re-evaluate this approach based on the competitive outcomes of Phase 2,” the team said. 

Evil Geniuses placed fourth in Stage 1 of the VCT Americas 2025. Thus, they were locked for the EWC Americas Qualifier, which will occur on May 25. 

“We encourage fans who want to follow our team's EWC journey to individually support our players and coaches, who've worked hard to continue to compete at this level. Thank you to our community for understanding and supporting us and the team,” the statement finished. 

The Esports World Cup VALORANT tournament has a prize pool of $1.25 million. 

Evil Geniuses is not among the 40 esports squads of the Esports World Cup Foundation Club Partner Program. 

Fan Reaction

Critics of the Esports World Cup point to the host location, Saudi Arabia, often citing “sportswashing,” which is essentially using sports and events to distract people from the kingdom’s differences on human rights versus a continent like North America, where Evil Geniuses hails from. 

Earlier this month, the geography game GeoGuessr drew criticism from fans for entering the tournament. 

Plenty of other titles have joined the tournament, too, including Apex Legends, Rainbow Six Siege, TEKKEN 8, and more. 

Overall, the fan reaction was pretty positive. 

“The reasoning makes sense. All of NA tier 1 don’t have many events for practice besides VCT and scrims. EG have 4 champions points and are at #5 at the moment behind Kru with 5 points. Any practice for EG prior to split 2 could enable them to sneak the last spot from Kru,” one X user wrote in response to the statement. 

However, there were some dissenting opinions.

“Saying you aren't going to cover it but "you'll re-evaluate that stance if you guys advance" doesn't mean anything. To fly your team out & support them to try and win sportwashing money complacency itself, but can't wait to see your empty hearted Pride month content in June!” someone else wrote.