iNcontroL claims Evil Geniuses lacks CS:GO roster because other teams threatened to boycott Twitch
Update 8:15PM PST: CEO of Cloud9 Jack Etienne has posted a response to the video. In a post on Reddit Etienne wrote, “I never threatened to boycott twitch, this is inaccurate. Incontrol was either misinformed or is just looking for some fresh drama to promote his YouTube.”
Etienne also alleged that Evil Geniuses had signed a team but that the players had been banned before an announcement could be made, pointing to a past Reddit thread.
The original story follows below.
Esports organization Evil Geniuses has not had a Counter-Strike roster for five years. The team’s former Counter-Strike lineup was disbanded in January 2012, and the organization has not signed any new CS players since then.
According to a new video released on YouTube by former Evil Geniuses StarCraft II player Geoff “iNcontroL” Robinson, the reason for EG’s lack of a presence in CS:GO can be attributed to the events following the organization’s acquisition by Twitch (topic starts at 31 minute mark).
As a direct result of the acquisition, rival esports teams reportedly approached Twitch and threatened to boycott the streaming platform if EG were to sign a Counter-Strike team.
“Cloud9 and a few other organizations, specifically Jack [Etienne] from Cloud9, went to Twitch and organized a declaration basically,” iNcontroL said in his video. “I don’t know if it was actually written down but this is what they said: this group of people will absolutely boycott all things Twitch if EG is allowed to have a Counter-Strike team, specifically.”
Twitch acquired Evil Geniuses and Alliance parent company GoodGame in December 2014, when Counter-Strike: Global Offensive was gaining popularity as an esport. In the video, iNcontroL alleges that the acquisition had made other esports organizations uncomfortable, feeling that Evil Geniuses could receive priority treatment and advantages over rival teams on Twitch’s platform.
“I’m not proud to say, but Twitch absolutely complied,” iNcontroL said. “And EG was put on the shelf, and kind of left to wilt.”
“In this situation where you do have such a huge advantage, ends up being the death of you. Because all the other companies were so incredibly uncomfortable with EG being in such a good position that it froze them. At every turn, the cry would be, ‘Yeah, well you have Twitch as your owner. That’s not fair, you can’t possibly do this.’”
Former GoodGame founder and CEO Alex Garfield parted ways with Twitch in August 2016. In December last year, Twitch announced that both Evil Geniuses and Alliance would be breaking away to become independent, player-owned organizations. Despite the relationship, Twitch claims that the teams “received no preferential treatment,” during this time. It is not known if the boycott still applies, given EG’s current independent status.
